When Heat Turns Deadly(abc.net.au) |
When Heat Turns Deadly(abc.net.au) |
The use of the wet bulb temperature as a measure for human survivability doesn't work at low humidities.
The instrument they use is the sling psychrometer, a long cylindrical tube [1]. If I had to hazard a guess, the ratio of surface area to volume is much higher for the bulb than it is a human.
Evaporative cooling is a function of surface area--more surface area => more cooling capacity. I'd be curious to see how accurate the model if the surface area to volume ratio were more human-scale.
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/sling-psych...