When I’m at the beach and the water is around 23-25°C, it feels like touching ice but when air temperature ist around there, sometimes even topless it’s hot, even in the shadow. Or even if it’s cool, it doesn’t feel that cold
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As others have stated, it’s about the rate of heat transfer. To understand how that impacts our comfort, understand that our bodies are constantly rejecting heat. We produce heat through various metabolic processes as well as through physical movement.
Our internal temperature is around 37C. We are most comfortable in still air around 25C because that 17C difference happens to be enough to keep the rate of heat transfer via conduction through our bodies to our skin (which is somewhere between 37C and 25C) and via convection from our skin to the cooler air, about equal to the rate that we produce heat.
Since water is a better conductor of heat, 25C water removes more heat than still 25C air, so we perceive it as being “colder.”
Similarly, moving air will remove more heat than still air at the same temperature, due to forced convection. As a result we feel “colder” on a windy 25C day than a still one.
Generally speaking we don’t sense temperature, we sense the rate of heat transfer.
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