Deadly heat stress conditions are already occurring

Heat stress limits for human survivability have been previously defined by a 6-hour exposure to a wet-bulb temperature of 35oC. However, the recently developed physiology-based HEAT-Lim model demonstrates that environmental heat stress thresholds may be cooler and drier than previously thought. We employ HEAT-Lim to determine whether non-survivable thresholds were surpassed during six historical events where conditions were climatologically extreme and/or high heat-related mortality was reported. Our results show that non-survivable conditions are occurring during present-day heat events, all of which are below 35oC wet-bulb temperature. Of concern is regular exceedances of deadly thresholds for older people directly exposed across all events. Moreover, extremely hot yet dry conditions are found to be just as deadly as hot and humid conditions. For future climatological assessments, we emphasise the importance of employing increasingly accurate physiology-derived methods to assess the risk of potentially deadly heat stress.