Not that it is good news or anything, but the headline is a little misleading. Recent work has found the threshold for fatal heat plus humidity is lower for the elderly than for young healthy adults. This research also looked at historic heat waves and determined that the fatal threshold has *already* been surpassed in recent years.
Until this study came out, there was a one-size-fits-all wet bulb threshold, which had to be experienced and sustained for a sufficient period of time to kill *anybody*
This new work is refining that research to help us understand how heat and humidity impacts different demographics.
Presumably, the sick, and the very young, and anybody with a typical physiology are similarly at risk of lower wetbulb temperatures
One more thing about this recent work is, they only looked at heat stroke deaths. In the original paper, they pointed out that heat waves have probably contributed to a great many deaths due to other primary causes, possibly at even lower wetbulb temperatures
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Not that it is good news or anything, but the headline is a little misleading. Recent work has found the threshold for fatal heat plus humidity is lower for the elderly than for young healthy adults. This research also looked at historic heat waves and determined that the fatal threshold has *already* been surpassed in recent years.
Until this study came out, there was a one-size-fits-all wet bulb threshold, which had to be experienced and sustained for a sufficient period of time to kill *anybody*
This new work is refining that research to help us understand how heat and humidity impacts different demographics.
Presumably, the sick, and the very young, and anybody with a typical physiology are similarly at risk of lower wetbulb temperatures
One more thing about this recent work is, they only looked at heat stroke deaths. In the original paper, they pointed out that heat waves have probably contributed to a great many deaths due to other primary causes, possibly at even lower wetbulb temperatures