– what is a wet bulb temperature and why is it dangerous?
In: Biology
The main way that we lose excess heat when it’s warm is by sweating. Warmer water molecules are released into the air as evapouration, leaving the less energetic ones as a liquid on the skin, allowing the body to be cooled. But air can only hold a certain amount of water in it. If it’s very humid, the water that evapourates from your sweat is immediately replaced by the water that’s already suspended in the air since it can’t hold any more water in it. When you have really warm and humid weather, the water that’s reintroduced into your sweat can even be warmer than your body, causing it to heat up beyond your regular tolerances.
The wet-bulb temperature measures this effect. You would wrap a thermometer in wet cloth and see whether it gets cooler or warmer, compared to the dry-bulb temperature. What’s the dry-bulb temperature, you may ask? That’s just what you measure if it’s not surrounded by wet cloth. In other words, the ambient temperature of the air. If the wet bulb is warmer than the dry bulb, people are in danger of overheating.
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