PICE Talk by Yi-Chuan Lu

(University of California, Berkeley)

Title: Limits to Survivability in Extreme Heat

Abstract: The heat index, defined by Robert Steadman in 1979, is used by the National Weather Service to communicate the threat that hot and humid conditions pose to human health. With global warming, the heat index will be more important than ever, but it is undefined at the high combinations of heat and humidity that will be experienced at many locations around the world, especially in the tropics. We extend the heat index to include all possible combinations of temperature and relative humidity, and show that unchecked global warming will rapidly push wide swaths of the tropics into deadly territory. We also compare this extended heat index to a commonly used wet-bulb temperature threshold and to a prognostic model of a human's core temperature that accounts for variations in wind speed and both shortwave and longwave radiation.

Please join via the zoom link: https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/j/64402633878