Threshold for "Deadly" days

The Nature paper (referenced last entry) determines the threshold for "deadly" days by sifting through and classifying various reported heat wave events  in places like France and Southern Australia and comparing them to days with "ordinary weather" in the same place, using a classification technique ("support vector machines") that aims to draw boundaries between types of events based on what appear to be discriminatory boundaries between attributes. In this case it is found with only a fair degree of reliability that heat-attributed deaths generally occur on hot days, with a lesser impact from high humidity. Notably unsurprising conclusions.

By picking points from the chart I developed a simple linear relationship (shown above in green) that emulates the "deadly" boundary. It also appeared to me (as an old psychrometrician) that the boundary appeared to correspond fairly well to a wet bulb temperature of about 26, at least when humidities are 70 percent or more, which is usually the case in Bangkok. Given the broad approximations of the method the study dictates that on days with usual hot-season humidity in the tropics the average daily temperature becomes "deadly" at about 29 degrees.

Readers of this blog might recall that this is the temperature where I turn on the bedroom air conditioner at night. Readers who have some experience with wet bulb and global wet bulb temperatures will be aware that military training and sports practice are thermally acceptable at wet bulb temperatures of 26, heading into precautionary modes only above Twb=26.

Global risk of deadly heat: Bangkok compared

Publication of this paper "Global risk of deadly heat" in the prestigious Nature Climate Change journal last week 

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3322.html

has created a considerable stir. It concludes that a deadly increase in tropical health problems is a likely outcome following man-made global warming.

How well does this hold up for Thailand? This question will be examined here starting with this brief entry showing the results of the Nature study (right) compared to recent years including the record (?) 2016 in Bangkok (left).

Following this study, almost all days in the Bangkok hot seasons (March-June) for the past few years would be categorized as "deadly", that is, they are hotter than the red line which is meant to divide various historical heat waves with and without fatalities. With humidity typically 70 percent, it follows from this study which draws from a global database (not specific to Thailand or other tropical regions) that average daily temperatures of higher than about 27 deg should be classified as "deadly". This line also corresponds closely to a wet bulb temperature of 26. Is this suggestive of fatalities? How does this compare with observations here in Thailand over the past few years, both personal and published by local researchers? Or with standards developed for military training and sports internationally?

The hot season broken by moisture

Mid-May dawn: with the coming of rainy and cloudy weather, the back of the hot season seems to be broken, with dawn temperatures below 30 degC (86F) in my downtown neighborhood. At the peak of the hot weather a couple of weeks back they were consistently over 30. 

Notice the 28-30 temps downtown and the 27 or so further out including the Don Muang airport area where our long-term records are. This agrees with my previous study indicating a 2-3 deg "heat island effect" in the Sukhumvit area.

Afternoon Bangkok sun blasts glassy condos

In an earlier post we showed how anyone seeking a "view condo" pays the penalty of terrible heat either in the morning (east facing) or afternoon (west facing). Curtains, blinds, or dark glass don't help much, they just heat up to 50 deg C (130F) and act like ski-cabin radiators. Ugh! Few of us think of this when we buy a condo, we are charmed by views which become minor considerations after we occupy a condo for a few weeks.

Be warned! Air conditioning does not alleviate this radiant heat problem!

Netatmo shows local heat island effect in Bangkok

This is a mix of select data showing you local differences in dawn temperature. On the recent right side you can see several sources superimposed. My condo Netatmo outside temp (brown) is the highest, probably because of all the walls and concrete that surround the sensor. The yellow points from the Planetorium are very similar, suggesting that the Sukhumvit area overall has a generally elevated temperature probably from urban heat island effects, about +3 C degrees heating.

Red points are Don Muang data, for which I have long term data, and green points from Korat, higher elevation and upcountry, generally 2-3 deg lower than Bangkok. The new airport at Souvanaphoum is also a little lower than Don Muang; it's further out of town.

Notice how last year the morning low at Don Muang was over 30 for several days. No such days this year at Don Muang, so last year's peak was a little worse, because the rains came a little later. (Sukhumvit area is this year is over 30, only because of +3 deg heat island effect). I had earlier expected this year to be worse by comparison, but that was before I realized that my Netatmo local readings were boosted by urban heat island warming.

If I want to estimate Don Muang dawn temperature from my Netatmo data I should subtract 3 deg. These corrected values are also plotted here shown as blue points.

So we have just now this week hit the probable high point in discomfort for 2017. To me it was suffocating. I found myself turning on the aircon all the time. My pub mate Al, exactly my age: "I never complained about the heatt here before, but this year it really hit me." We both thank clouds and rain that are now pulling the dawn temperature down into the mid 20s.

But even now today I am turning on aircon on arriving home at the end of the day, after 6 pm.

Glass condos: good way to throw away money and suffer at the same time

So when you buy a west or worse east facing condo with those big glass walls that are fashionable now in Bangkok (Wow! Look at that view!) you don't think of the expense and years of misery you are taking on. But let's start with my glass door to a small veranda exposed this month to morning sun from about 8 to 11 am. Here are the calcs for refrigeration capacity and expense. A sunny morning heats the curtains to about 50 C, which then serve the same function as hot water radiators. To offset this added heat I need a dedicated 26000 BTU split air conditioner unit, it barely provides the needed 10 kw of cooling power (2.6 kw electric power). So maybe you need two such units for this small room?

But you have plenty of money, so problem solved!

No, not at all. When you look at that curtain on waking up, you are looking not at a 25 degree cooled wall, but at a 50C heating panel, and though the room air may be 25 C, you are feeling that blast of radiant heat, as unwelcome on your face and body as it might be welcome in a northern ski lodge.

I will claim that it is not possible to live comfortably in such an environment, being driven from bed every morning because of solar heating via windows, regardless of air conditioning and curtains, blinds, etc which do little to prevent heating in the room, especially radiant heating from interior window coverings (or tinted windows). But anyone who has ever parked a closed car in the sun knows this already! 

A fiery April ascendancy of the sun

A noon without shadows, April 26

Now at the end of April last week the sun reached its noon zenith over the city of Bangkok. The morning 6 am temperature never dropped below 30 C -- possibly a record high in an era of ascending thermal discomfort. The temperature on my bedroom air conditioning thermostat, hardly ever different than the 29 C that drives me to flip the switch on at night, actually now tends to read 30 C, a level I never remember seeing before. My neighbor's walls are slightly cool to the touch, about 27, indicating that they, to my benefit, are using their air conditioning, holding room temperatures to about 25 which is the usual here in Thailand (though the government is trying to get people to raise their set temperatures to 26.)