It may be hot in the summer where you live, but here’s a question: how hot is too hot?
Like, at what temperature does your body ACTUALLY start to break down?
That escalated quickly.
Well, so have the world’s seasonal temperatures.
In Death Valley, one of the hottest places on earth, the average temperature for July
2018 was a whopping 42.3 degrees C. That’s the warmest single month that’s ever been
reliably measured.
In the WORLD.
Seasons are getting more severe, especially summers, which are accompanied by heat waves
that can be seriously deadly.
In the U.S., extreme heat now causes more deaths than all other weather-related hazards.
Heat waves around Europe have been killing record numbers of people, most notably since
2003, when unprecedented summer temperatures resulted in the deaths of over 70,000 people
across Europe.
And it shows no signs of slowing down, with all-time high temperature records being broken
across the world.
A new study is the first to project heat-related mortality into the future.
The conclusion?
If we don’t adapt to climate change, deaths due to heat-waves will increase all over the
world.
But how does heat actually kill you?
Your body normally cools itself down by transferring body heat to a cooler environment.
We do this one of two ways: our blood vessels dilate, bringing warm blood to flow close
to the surface of our skin where the heat can be transferred to the air*--this is why
some people may appear flushed when they’re hot.
Alternatively, we lose the heat by sweating--the liquid we release as sweat helps cool off
our skin and takes some of our body heat with it as it evaporates.
. But our internal body temperature sits at
around 37°C.
If the air surrounding us is as warm or warmer than we are, we can’t transfer our heat
anywhere outside our bodies as we warm up.
If humidity is high AND temperatures are high, sweating doesn’t do as good a job at cooling
us off because it can’t evaporate--the air around us is already too full of moisture.
And when these conditions occur, as they do in heat waves, it’s kind of amazing how
fast everything breaks down.
If your body is starting to overheat, the first thing you may notice is that you stop
sweating altogether . This means your hypothalamus, the region of your brain that controls heat
regulation, has been compromised and has stopped working properly.
You now don’t have a way to give off heat, and your body temperature may be rising.
You may be feeling fatigued, your brain telling your muscles to slow down, and you’re at
high risk of dizziness and even unconsciousness.
Past 41°C, your body starts to shut down in earnest.
You may experience seizures or fall into a coma as your tissues stop functioning properly
on a cellular and even protein level.
Your organs start to leak toxins into your body, and if left unchecked, this process
leads to multisystem organ damage, then failure, and swiftly thereafter, death.
And the thing is, temperatures don’t even have to be that crazy--they just have to be
significantly greater than what that area is typically used to.
A 105 degree day in Arizona may not be that different from the norm, but a 90 degree day
in Scotland could be deadly.
Heat waves are also magnified in urban areas, whose asphalt and metal buildings soak up
and store more heat than surrounding areas, making cities even hotter than the heat waves
base temperature.
And the places in the world that are hotter to begin with will be hardest hit with the
highest temperatures--new projections estimate that by 2100, countries in South Asia may
be too hot for people to survive.
So could we adapt?
New studies say probably not.
If the projected warming does take place, the amount of land rendered uninhabitable
because it’’ll be too hot for the human body to handle could dwarf the amount of land
lost even to sea level rise, another huge impending climate change concern.
Just to reiterate, this means that some parts of the world will eventually be so hot that
we can’t live there because our bodies will actually break down.
Things are undeniably heating up. So, how do we get our way out of this one, guys?
Let us know what you think in the comments below, and subscribe to Seeker to stay updated
on the state of the world as we work to find solutions to major global problems.
Like this one here that’s about a group of surfer scientists who invented a new device
that monitors climate change from the surf break.
Also, we have some exciting new changes coming to the channel and we can’t wait to show
you!
It’s gonna look a little different around here guys, but it’ll be good, stay tuned.