Deadly humid heat affects billions including the US Midwest this century. “It’s very disturbing,” study co-author Matthew Huber of Purdue University. “It’s going to send a lot of people to emergency medical care.”
The study Greatly enhanced risk to humans as a consequence of empirically determined lower moist heat stress tolerance was conducted by Purdue and George Mason University and published August 15, 2023.
These results indicate that a significant portion of the world’s population will experience — for the first time in human history — prolonged exposures to uncompensable extreme moist heat. Humans will struggle to adapt to these conditions in a warmer world as they will present widespread challenges across many aspects of food–energy–water security, human health, and economic development including in the world’s most populous and most vulnerable regions.