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Persian Gulf Experiences Record (and Life-Threatening) Heat Index (msn.com) 105

Parts of the Persian Gulf "have seen the heat index, or how it feels when factoring in the humidity, reach 140 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit (60 to 65 Celsius)," reports the Washington Post, "fueled by an intense heat dome, the warmest water temperatures in the world and the influence of human-caused climate change." Temperatures at the Persian Gulf International Airport in Asaluyeh, Iran, climbed to 108 (42 C) on Wednesday and 106 (41 C) on Thursday, with both days recording a peak heat index of 149 (65 C). In Dubai, the temperature topped out at 113 (45 C) on Tuesday and the heat index soared to 144 (62 C). Other extreme heat indexes in recent days include 141 (61 C) in Abu Dhabi and 136 (58 C) at Khasab Air Base in Oman.

Last August, this same region experienced even more extreme heat indexes, climbing as high as 158 degrees (70 C).

The maximum air temperatures this week — generally between 105 and 115 (41 and 46 C) — have only been somewhat above normal. But the dew points — which are a measure of humidity — have been excessive, climbing well into the 80s (27 to 32 C). In the United States, any dew point over 70 degrees (21 C) is considered uncomfortably humid. It's the very high dew points that have propelled heat indexes up to 30 degrees (16 C) above actual air temperatures. The extreme humidity levels are tied to bathtub-like water temperatures in the Persian Gulf, the warmest in the world. According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, sea surface temperatures are as warm as 95 degrees (35 C).

Largely because of the high humidity, nighttime minimum temperatures have also remained exceptionally warm, in many cases staying above 85 (29 C). Temperatures in Iranshar, Iran, only dropped to 97 (36 C) on Wednesday night, its hottest July night on record.

"Researchers have identified the Persian Gulf among the regions most likely to regularly exceed life-threatening heat thresholds during the next 30 to 50 years," the article adds. And it also cites new heat records reported for the region by weather historian Maximiliano Herrera. "The United Arab Emirates saw a scorching high temperature of 123 while Adrar, Algeria, tied its record of 122 (50 C). Cities in both Kuwait and Iraq reached 126 (52 C), and Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia, notched a record of 124 (51 C)...

"The same heat dome that's in the Persian Gulf region has spread record heat northward into Eastern Europe, westward into northern Africa, and eastward into India, Pakistan and Indonesia. In Eastern Europe, high temperatures surpassed 104 (40 C), with some locations staying above 85 degrees (29 C) at night."
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Persian Gulf Experiences Record (and Life-Threatening) Heat Index

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  • by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Saturday July 20, 2024 @04:39PM (#64641222)
    It's a good thing that those who disproportionately benefit from these actions can't trivially escape their consequences while everyone else suffers.
    • Yes, we all know that oil CEOs are in extreme poverty and can't afford an air conditioner nor even a dehumidifier.

    • All Pray. and.... No Work...towards sustainable living. Who are the worlds greatest: Jet fuel burners, Air con and desalination oil burners, Constructors of the biggest and tallest EcoSystem destroyers, Culture of irrational population growth????
  • by drew_92123 ( 213321 ) on Saturday July 20, 2024 @04:51PM (#64641242)

    ...and dig a shallow hole and lie in it when it was really hot(we were poor and didn't have air conditioning).

    I learned this little trick when I was a kid by watching rabbits do this.

    I used to do this under a big tree in the back yard near the rabbit burrow during the summer when it was well over 100F in SoCal.

    It works very well, in fact it worked so well that if I fell asleep for an hour or two I'd wake up cold kind of like falling asleep in the tub.

    The best part was that the rabbits would come over and lick the sweat off of me... if you've never had a rabbit lick you you're missing out.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday July 20, 2024 @05:29PM (#64641298)

      Your houses must have been poorly designed. Airconditioning is a comfort not a necessity in virtually every climate. But we've lost the lessons of the past. Even 500 years ago arabs knew how to build houses to funnel cold air in and hot air out. For much of the 19th and 20th century we in the west even knew how to face windows and position houses in the prevailing wind direction.

      These days, we care about style over function, and just throw an airconditioning unit in. It's amazing how poorly we build houses these days.

      Also where are the awnings.

      • Your houses must have been poorly designed. Airconditioning is a comfort not a necessity in virtually every climate. But we've lost the lessons of the past. Even 500 years ago arabs knew how to build houses to funnel cold air in and hot air out. For much of the 19th and 20th century we in the west even knew how to face windows and position houses in the prevailing wind direction.

        Another trick forgotten was high ceilings (especially combined with adjustable vent windows over doors, which in turn were a bit t

        • by trawg ( 308495 )

          I live in a house like this right now and I've been here for two summers. They're called "Queenslanders" here. I'm moving out in five days and can't wait to get out of it. It's winter here now and it's ghastly cold because they're not insulated and trying to heat them is a nightmare. I do not want to be here another summer.

          In summer the high ceilings keep them cooler than outside until about midday, then without the air conditioning on the indoor temperature hits 30 degrees and stays at least there until pr

          • I live in a house like this right now and I've been here for two summers. They're called "Queenslanders" here. I'm moving out in five days and can't wait to get out of it. It's winter here now and it's ghastly cold because they're not insulated and trying to heat them is a nightmare. I do not want to be here another summer.

            In summer the high ceilings keep them cooler than outside until about midday, then without the air conditioning on the indoor temperature hits 30 degrees and stays at least there until probably after 7pm.

            Yep, if the average temperature of the air and ground is too high, a passively-cooled house is never going to get cool enough without assistance (i.e, proper phase-change air conditioning). Sure, good design can make it "less awful" but it's still not a nice place to be, and it's worse if the inhabitants need to get meaningful work done, as opposed to just sipping cool drinks and watching other people toil in the plantation.

            I agree 100% that homes are poorly designed, and there is a lot of low-hanging fruit

            • by trawg ( 308495 )

              I should have noted that this house was built in the 1910s, as far as we can figure out. So it's not like someone banged it out in the last few years just to torture us.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's partly down to towns and cities, i.e. the density of the housing making freely aligning a house and ensuring good airflow is difficult. It gets even worse with blocks of apartments where most of them don't have two opposing exterior walls.

        Thing is even the Arabs would have had a hard time with the humidity and heat. When it's not too humid your body can shed heat into the cooler air much more easily.

        • No it doesn't. That's simply the result of shithouse town planning. There's nothing about density that prevents a town planner from adopting the architectural lessons of how to manage heat.

          Again it's a pointless stylistic choice. The "I want to be fancy and don't want this neighbourhood to look like every house faces the same direction" style of design.

          Thing is even the Arabs would have had a hard time with the humidity and heat. When it's not too humid your body can shed heat into the cooler air much more easily.

          Actually they haven't really. Not in their homes anyway. The people who are having actual issues are those *not* at home, i.e. look at the death toll from th

    • Just put a small wet towel around your neck like in the good old bad old days in the desert. I still do that when I feel hot in summer even though Im now living in a temperate country.
      • Evaporative cooling doesn't work when the air can't absorb any more water.

        • Evaporative cooling doesn't work when the air can't absorb any more water.

          We can often tell where people are at by their approach to air cooling. Here in the wet, muggy East US, I know of no one using a swamp cooler because they don't work well. But out in the Arid west, they do. And about that 85 degree night time weather, we had a few so far this summer here in PA. And that's the odd thing. Yes, we've had some really hot days - but during the 2 long heat waves so far this summer, it hasn't cooled off all that much at night.

          Dropped to 69 degrees two nights ago - That felt pr

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      I'd try this, but dang the bugs like mosquitoes and red imported fire ants. :(

    • Rabbits often have fleas. Dogs luv to chase them. Fleas usually stay on rabbits unless killed then look for another home
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Simple fact, if the dew point climbs above 37C for an indeterminate amount of time, you will die

  • Sounds about right (Score:5, Informative)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Saturday July 20, 2024 @05:10PM (#64641266)

    I was stationed in southern Bahrain during Desert Shield/Storm back in '90-'91 during my time in the Corps. During the day the temps would regularly get above 110F with uncomfortable but manageable humidity levels and at night no lower than 85F with damn near 95% humidity. It's was brutal and miserable to say the least while living in a tent the entire time. I actually went water skiing in the Persian Gulf a few months after I got there and the water was very warm, much warmer than Lake Erie where I grew up, and Erie can reach as high as 82 during warm summers. Sounds to me like conditions have not changed all that much. Fun fact, the aircraft I worked on would get so hot during the day that we couldn't work on them for fear of blistering our hands. We did most of our maintenance at night.

    • by kyoko21 ( 198413 )

      damn... you know it's hot when you literally have to work during the dark side of the earth...

      • I'm not sure if this was planned or not, but right around the time Desert Storm officially kicked in (Jan 17th) it happened to be the "rainy" season for the area. It rained for a few days (no more than five if I remember correctly) and the extremely hot daytime weather subsided a bit for the remainder of Desert Storm. This allowed us the opportunity to service the planes during the day since they were involved with performing flight operations all night long.

        • by kyoko21 ( 198413 )

          damn that's wild... i guess it was just by sheer luck that you guys were able to cool off from the rain.. though i can't imagine what that humidity is like or if the desert heat just dried all that water off....

          • The humidity was still brutal at night, but at least the temps stayed just below 95F during the day which was a huge relief.

    • Sounds to me like conditions have not changed all that much.

      I guess hot is hot, but a 4F change is a decent amount. Not something you'd want to repeat especially given your advanced years. https://climateknowledgeportal... [worldbank.org]

  • All I can say (Score:5, Informative)

    by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Saturday July 20, 2024 @05:11PM (#64641268) Homepage

    All I can say is sorry young people. A few of us tried, but it was like being Don Quixote surrounded by CO2 spewing Windmills. I commuted by bicycle. The roads were I lived, though a bit dangerous, did not compare to how bad roads are in other parts of the US.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Sad as it is, I agree. Sorry we did not manage to sway the majority. We should have done more. I do not really see how we could have though. That is not a justification, I simply do not see it. And it feels like a personal failure.

      You are going into a world that is fundamentally screwed up and getting worse and worse, due to very little fault of your own. And your children? It will be worse for them again. As to my personal CO2 footprint, I think I am doing ok (no car, minimum energy housing, etc.), but tha

    • by fjo3 ( 1399739 )
      I'm bringing a child into this world. It's a completely selfish act. I hope my child doesn't hate me for it.
      • Itâ(TM)s population growth thatâ(TM)s causing so the environmental problems. If you only bring one child in to this world then youâ(TM)ve contributed to population decline, which is environmentally good.

        • Itâ(TM)s population growth thatâ(TM)s causing so the environmental problems. If you only bring one child in to this world then youâ(TM)ve contributed to population decline, which is environmentally good.

          Look how perfectly China's one child policy worked.

          • by sjames ( 1099 )

            China's problem is that other social and cultural factors meant that that one child better be a boy or you would starve in old age.

            • China's problem is that other social and cultural factors meant that that one child better be a boy or you would starve in old age.

              With some horrifying ramifications!

              I've read and watched a lot of Chinese news,(in english) and they are now concerned about Sheng nü, (leftover women) the new phenomenon of multitudes of well educated and working single women who are seeking husbands in their late 30's even 40's. The term has been adopted by others as well.

              The interviews I've watched follow a pattern. The woman notes her level of education, that she has a high paying career in a prominent position, a house, and a car or two. But men

          • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            Actually, birth rates in China plunged prior to the policy.
            • Actually, birth rates in China plunged prior to the policy.

              So the one child policy was superfluous?

      • I'm bringing a child into this world. It's a completely selfish act. I hope my child doesn't hate me for it.

        Rant time - not directed specifically at you.

        Imagine if people did this during the depression, or way back when the average lifespan was 30, and that an alwful lot of children never made it to puberty.

        I don't know if modern people didn't pay attention during history class or what. But if we think that any children born today will envy the dead because there has not ever been a time in human history that things have been worse, that this is the absolute worst time that humans have ever existed in - well

        • by mmell ( 832646 ) on Saturday July 20, 2024 @07:55PM (#64641546)
          What's happening now was predicted with exquisite accuracy clear back in the 1970's. I was there. I remember.
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Depressions are temporary economic problems. Climate change is permanent on any human timescale.

          • Depressions are temporary economic problems. Climate change is permanent on any human timescale.

            Are you missing the point on purpose?

            Would you like to go back to those days, and maybe contract polio or pertussis, or even your dismissive "temporary economic problems"?

            The concept that there was no worse time than now, is simply wrong. That there are people who do not have the moxie to do anything but cry because they are victims by default gains them exactly nothing, other than some sort of weird victim's badge that is supposed to elicit pity is going to fail them harder than climate change.

            Wha

        • Imagine if people did this during the depression, or way back when the average lifespan was 30, and that an alwful lot of children never made it to puberty.

          I'm imagining a world without overpopulation, without resource constraints, with far reduced CO2 emissions, without food crises. Is that what you were going for?

          • Imagine if people did this during the depression, or way back when the average lifespan was 30, and that an alwful lot of children never made it to puberty.

            I'm imagining a world without overpopulation, without resource constraints, with far reduced CO2 emissions, without food crises. Is that what you were going for?

            I'm suggesting that the world is in a non-sustainable state of affairs. Way too many people, and most of them wanting a first world lifestyle.

            I certainly do not want to go back to hunter-gatherer days and definitely not to the first agrarian days. I can't imagine anyone would.

            We must lower CO2 emissions. but killing all of the moocows is a non-starter.

            Oh yeah - famines. We are in an era where we're racing a clock. I like to use India as an example. Sniggling in at 1.3 billion, and having added ove

      • I have asked my young adult grand-daughter to seriously consider not having children. It's not that I don't want to see a great-grandchild, but that the world she'd bring it into is going to be a hellish place, and I don't want that for any of my descendants.
    • Sorry, kids. Our generation totally dropped the ball on this one. FWIW, we made a fortune doing it . . .
    • by radoni ( 267396 )

      I've done everything I am able to do and not be part of the problem, but also am not inclined to tell other people what they should or should not do.

      I do heat with firewood, and drive an EV and no oil fuel engines are permitted at my residence. It's not so difficult to understand that digging sequestered carbon deep from the bowels of the planet surface and fucking lighting it on fire will add that carbon to the livable portion of the planet surface. When I hear 85 year old childless end-of-their-line coupl

  • Or not. Well, I think collectively the human race has made the decision that it will not turn out that bad. Of course such decisions are not something physical reality cares about. Essentially, there is a much needed lesson in humility incoming. Whether the students will survive that lessin is open.

  • ...but if I was, I'd be praying for a solution, or at least, a scientific advance that helps limit the damage. I am not without hope, but there is not much I can do. I realize it's no solution, but I grow drought tolerant native trees in my back yard, and plant them alongside desolate areas of the highway near where I live. I put on an reflective safety vest so I look official, drill a hole using auger, and I'm in and out of there in just a few minutes. If nothing else, the shade is good for the homeless w
    • ...but if I was, I'd be praying for a solution, or at least, a scientific advance that helps limit the damage.

      Praying won't help you. This is all part of god's plan [imgur.com].

  • by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Saturday July 20, 2024 @06:16PM (#64641338) Journal

    During and after the COVID shutdown it was noticed in the global temperature tracking-and-modeling community that some industrial and transportation "air pollution" had a COOLING effect. Further (like volcanic pollution) it clears out (like volcanic pollution) or builds up in a time scale of a couple years, rather than the decades-to-centuries time scale of greenhouse gasses. Some significant components of this effect are fine dusts from industrial activity, high-altitude exhaust from commercial aviation (dust and contrails), and, massively, sulfur emissions from shipping (increasing and brightening over-ocean clouds).

    In particular, as of a few months ago it was estimated that the reduction of shipping sulfur emission, due to the recently rolling-out global limits on sulfur in ship fuel (previously cheap but high sulfur), plus the reduction in shipping due to the COVID supply-chain disruptions, MORE that accounted for ALL the sea-level water temperature increase since the limits started going into effect. (That may not be current now, as shipping picks up post-COVID lockdown but using still lower sulfur fuel as the limits become more effective).

    Deliberately adding sulfur to ship fuel to increase the global cooling part of the balance (as had been proposed even before this) has it's own problems. But perhaps modifying ships' cooling water and exhaust systems to introduce sea-water spray (which dries to cloud-seeding particles) into the hot exhaust and vent it to the air could produce the same effect without adding any more or different "pollution" than increased wave-action (as from storms) would.

    Meanwhile, regardless of how much the added CO2 from previous industrial fossil fuel consumption may have contributed to heating the planet, it looks like slamming on the brakes may end up with a century or two of GREATER heating, and that a cut-CO2 solution would have involve tapering off the emissions without depressing manufacturing and transportation, over a period of decades.

    Which, just incidentally, is exactly what the rollout of renewable energy, now driven more by economics and recent technology improvements than government promotion, has been doing (or had been before the draconian interference with the US fossil fuel industry.)

    • Let me know when you experience "Valley Fever". Let me know how you like it. Let me know how you feel about pollution in general and our contribution to global climate change in particular after a week or two of technicolor sunsets (and breathing the air that creates them). Until then, please be quiet.
      • Clearly, you've never been to Los Angeles Let me know how you like it.

        Been there. Also silicon valley. First in '73 (when the latter smelled like a fireplace three seasons out of four) and I turned down a job invitation from Signetics because of, mostly , that. (Didn't move to Silicon Valley until ;'86 or so.)

        Let me know when you experience "Valley Fever".

        Did that, too. (Bleh!) But the several-year allergy honeymoon (before picking up reactions to the local pollens was sweet.

        Let m

        • Oh, yes:

            - The "hockey stick graph" has been discredited even among the warmists. Seems it included data that took tree ring width to be a measure of temperature, when it's also (massively) increased by higher carbon dioxide levels even without any temperature increase or other environmental change. So it's useless as evidence for how much, how, or whether, a carbon dioxide increase affected temperature.

  • um, wtf is a "heat index"? Those temperatures were reached in Sacramento, California the other week. Unless the TEMPERATURE (not "heat index" lol) reaches 120F or more it's not news.
    • Wet bulb threshold . Heat and humidity that is difficult to overcome. Old and sick dying in Houston area now due to storm power outages , it is not extreme heat but prolonged hot plus humid wears folks down . The elderly and sick who cannot evacuate suffer and die
    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      And when I lived in Madera it frequently got even hotter. But the San Joaquin Valley has DRY heat. That's why swamp coolers can be used.

  • Anybody paying attention knows that humanity is too late with the eco-turnaround and aside from making it happen we will have significant extra work with doing damage control already.

    However, the increasing reports of lethal heat waves do have me extra concerned. For the simple fact that we obviously already have kicked off cascading effects completely driven by mechanisms that humanity has zero control over and those are only "warming up" (NPI) just now to push the ecosphere into a new equilibrium that has

  • The market will solve it, right? The trickle down economy will empower the masses to fix it. Easy peasy! The god will not allow for us to perish or ... he will but then hmm unknown are his way.

    Back in the country I am from, we used say sarcastically "let there be flood after we are gone, who cares" (free translation).

    I do not see any likely solution considering human traits of the human society. Somehow we will get together, put aside all our differences and let's MAGA - Make ALL Good Again, eh?

    Something

  • by Daina.0 ( 7328506 ) on Sunday July 21, 2024 @02:36AM (#64641944)

    I am annoyed with misleading headlines and articles. Heat index is not ambient air temperature, but it makes it feel hotter than it is due to evaporation not happening due to already saturated air. Starting out by saying outrageous temperatures imply not a heat index. I want to slap the editor that let this misleading article get published. The world record for straight temperature which is 134.1F on July 10, 1913 at Furnace Creek, Death Valley, California. Maybe if someone paves a big parking lot there that record will eventually be broken.

    The record heat index temperature is 178F in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia on July 8, 2003. So a sensational article saying 140 or 150F is really declaring that it's a slow news day.

    • And yea more interesting are long-term averages, not peeks. I have measured 178F on my house wall when it was dark-colored so yea... big black (asphalt) parking lot would break 200 easily before it melts.

  • ... and hurry up with the technological solutions.

    Posturing and hectoring and making political hay from it all don't seem to be doing much.

  • RECORD heat? Heavens!

    Oh wait.
    1) Invent new 'measurement' of 'how hot it feels' which isn't really how hot it IS according to a thermometer but something much less objective
    2) cry that the sky is falling because your new number is higher than it's ever been

    You guys are hilarious.
    "It's a record!"
    Your own article: Last August, this same region experienced even more extreme heat indexes, climbing as high as 158 degrees (70 C)

    Back in the land of real temperatures, your article points out "The United Arab Emirat

  • 100 deg F feels exactly like 100 deg F, not 140 deg F or any other made up number. How bad it feels depends on the humidity, whether there is direct sunlight, the age of the person feeling it, how habituated they are to higher temps, etc etc, not some fake number that gets re-invented to be higher every so often.

  • > The maximum air temperatures this week — generally between 105 and 115 (41 and 46 C) — have only been somewhat above normal. But the dew points — which are a measure of humidity — have been excessive, climbing well into the 80s (27 to 32 C). In the United States, any dew point over 70 degrees (21 C) is considered uncomfortably humid. It's the very high dew points that have propelled heat indexes up to 30 degrees (16 C) above actual air temperatures.

    AI generated? Or do we now mea

Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.

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