World increasingly underprepared for ‘overlooked’ weather problem
'Excess humidity is really preventing the body from cooling down by evaporating our sweat.'
Australians are among the one billion people whose homes will become unliveable because of humidity. But researchers warn authorities are “underprepared” when it comes to tackling the threat.
There has been very little climate monitoring in tropical cities, and most of the weather stations have been set up in North America and Europe which aren't as impacted by humidity. This has led to a bias that focuses on heat rather than humidity, Monash University’s Dr Emma Ramsay has warned.
Measuring heat alone does not give a true picture of how stifling conditions are, because when humidity is also high it makes it harder still to stay comfortable. “Excess humidity is really preventing the body from cooling down by evaporating our sweat. If it's so hot that your body temperature starts to rise, and you can't cool down because it's too humid, then you're pushed into heatstroke,” Ramsay told Yahoo News.
Earlier this month Sydney struggled through its most humid day on record. On January 11 the dew point, a measure of humidity, hit 26.7 degrees the highest ever recorded at the Sydney's Observatory Hill.
2023 was the world’s hottest year on record because of climate change, and global average temperatures pushed beyond 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels for the first time. That’s particularly a problem for parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia that are already hot, which are expected to be the first parts of the world to face extended periods of heat beyond human tolerance.
At 2 degrees of warming, parts of northern Australia will face the same problem. “Not all the time, but for extended periods of more than a few hours. Places could experience this multiple times a year in a way that's really going to impact how we live, and if we can live there,” Ramsay said.
Why air conditioning isn't the 'catch-all' fix
The problem will particularly impact the poor and those who work outside. “Some of us might say: Oh well, we’ll stay inside, we have air conditioning. But this option isn’t available to the vast majority of the world who will have the highest exposure to these kinds of conditions,” Ramsay added.
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Cooling the planet could use 50 per cent more energy over the next 25 years, according to one estimate. The International Energy Agency expects the uptake of air conditioning units to grow from 1.6 billion in 2018 to 5.6 billion by 2050.
“Large scale uptake of air conditioning, which we're certainly already seeing, is not going to be a sustainable or an equitable outcome for anybody,” Ramsay said.
“We need to be also considering if our power grids will be able to handle this. When there are blackouts during heatwaves this causes huge amounts of mortality. So air conditioning can’t be seen as a catch-all fix.”
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