• 4ce
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    1 year ago

    According to wikipedia, prolonged exposure to wet-bulb temperatures above 35 °C means that you die. So 34.5 °C is still slightly below that limit, and presumably this was only the maximum during one day, i.e. it wasn’t prolonged. The problem arises when you can’t cool your body at any point during the day for a few days, which I naively imagine to be similar in effect to running a high fever that just doesn’t go down. And there is a serious risk that the temperature rise due to the climate crisis could lead to such conditions (several consecutive days with wet-bulb temperatures above 35 °C) regularly, especially in the tropics, if global mean temperatures rise by more than 1.5°C (see e.g. here). Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few (in particular old) people did in fact die due to the heat.