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The Increasingly Dangerous Hothouse — Local Reports Show It Felt Like 160 F (71 C) in India on June 13th, 2016
23
June, 2016
The
climate change induced delay of India’s monsoon is a pretty big
deal. Not only does it reduce the amount of moisture — necessary
for the provision of life-giving crops for this country of 1.2
billion — provided by the annual rains, it also increases the
potential for life threatening heatwave conditions. And according to
local reports, some of the highest heat index values ever recorded on
the face of the Earth were seen in Bhubaneswar, India during a period
of record heat and high humidity as the Asian Monsoon struggled to
advance.
*****
The
Indian province of Odisha sweltered under high heat and humidity that
may well have represented the most miserable conditions ever recorded
on Earth at any time or place on June 12th and 13th of 2016. Cooling
monsoonal rains should have arrived over this eastern section along
the Bay of Bengal by that time. But this year, the rains were delayed
by about a week and were still about 5 days away. The heat was firmly
entrenched. A great wall that seemed to fend the monsoon off.
(The
India Monsoon is finally starting to catch up. After being delayed by
1-2 weeks during early June, the monsoon is now on time for some
locations even as it still delayed by 5-7 days for parts of western
India. The early June delay, however, has probably lowered overall
moisture content of the monsoon even as it contributed to record heat
index and wet bulb readings for sections of Odisha on June 12 to 13.
Image source: India
Meteorological Department.)
As
the frontal edge of the monsoonal flow began to run into a region of
high temperatures over Odisha, humidity levels spiked even as
temperatures remained high. On the 12th and 13th of June, 2016,
thermometers topped out at between 101 F (38 C) and 109 F (43 C) even
as humidity levels rose. This combination generated a spike in what
is called the Misery Index (or an indicator of how hot if felt to be
outside). And it also, apparently, pushed wet bulb temperatures in
some areas to record levels for any place on Earth.
Wet
Bulb at 38 C?
For
an unconfirmed report out of Bhubaneswar indicates that temperatures
on June 13th hit 103.5 F (39.7 C) even as relative humidity readings
were at 87 percent. That’s a wet bulb reading of 37.6 C. And
if this report is true, that means it felt like 160 degrees
Fahrenheit or 71 degrees Celsius for a brief period in Bhubaneswar
that day.
If so, this would be near the highest Misery Index value ever
recorded on the planet — just a hair below last
year’s peak measure in Iraq of a 163 F or 73 C heat index (38.4 C
wet bulb) reading.
And outright crushing periods during 2015 when India’s wet bulb
measures in Andhra Pradesh hit 30 C.
(According
to Earth Nullschool, it felt like 41 to 54 C [104 to 127 F] outside
over Eastern India on June 12th and 13th of 2016 due to combined high
levels of heat and humidity. Local reports from Bhubaneswar indicate
that this Misery Index hit a stunning 71 C [160 F] on June 13th.
Image source: Earth
Nullschool.)
A
wet bulb measure is a kind of thermometer for latent heat in the
atmosphere.
It uses a wet bladder to measure the temperature of a membrane at the
point at which water evaporates. It’s meant to simulate the lowest
temperature the human skin can reach through evaporative cooling as
the body sweats. The higher the combined heat and humidity, the
higher the wet bulb temperature and the hotter it feels. We’ve all
experienced this when stepping outside on a day during which both the
temperature and humidity are high. And we intuitively know that it’s
the combination of heat and atmospheric moisture that makes hot days
feel even more oppressive.
It’s
a combo that’s also dangerous to human health. At a certain point,
the human body becomes unable to cool itself by sweating. And this
level of latent heat at which the human body becomes incapable of
transporting heat away from the skin is a wet bulb reading of 35
degrees Celsius.
Wet
bulb readings do not need to hit 35 C to risk loss of life and heat
injury. Wet bulbs above 25 C are considered dangerous and readings
for extended periods near 30 C have resulted in mass injury and loss
of life in places like Europe during the early 2000s, in Chicago
during 1995 and in India during 2015 and 2016. However, exceeding wet
bulb readings of 35 C over extended periods of time is an
extraordinarily dangerous event. It’s
also a new hazard related to human caused climate change.
For last year was the first time a wet bulb reading above 35 C was
ever recorded on the face of the Earth. And the 2016 37.6 C wet bulb
reading for Bhubaneswar, if it bears out, is an extraordinary
measure.
Readings
this high over large regions over any extended period would make
staying outdoors without access to cool water or climate controlled
environments unlivable for human beings. And a human forced warming
of the world by fossil fuel burning appears to now be in the process
of bringing those conditions about. A
condition of dangerous added latent heat to the atmosphere that has
caused some scientists to sound the alarm that a global hothouse
emergency is already upon us.
And that unless a massive curtailment of fossil fuel burning takes
place soon — large sections of the Earth’s surface will be
rendered uninhabitable to human beings due to atmospheric latent heat
content alone.
For
as ocean surface temperatures rise, more moisture is pumped into the
atmosphere in the form of humidity. This extra humidity hits regions
of airs that have already been warmed to much higher readings by the
over-burden of heat trapping gasses, like CO2, in the atmosphere. The
result is a higher latent heat content of the airs of the Earth, and
the breaching of wet bulb readings that are deadly to human beings
who lack access to climate controlled environments.
UPDATED
11:00 PM EST, June 21
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Hat
tip to Wili
Hat
tip to Colorado Bob
Hat
tip to Scott
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