A Temperature Of 25º Can Seem Unpleasantly High. How Do People Living In Countries...

[sandyRoe]

...nearer the Equator cope with much greater heat?

[2sp_]

Air Con?

I'm sure you would become acclimatised to the heat if you lived there long enough.

If everyone wants to have a whip round, I would be more than happy to conduct field research on a tropical island somewhere...

[Zacs-Master]

Acclimatised from birth.

[sandyRoe]

That's probably it. What seems sweltering to us would have them looking for an extra cardigan.

[excelsior-1]

...and i'd be happy to accompany you, 2sp

[Zacs-Master]

You can see this in countries such as Spain where in Feb we can quite happily walk around in t shirt and shorts but the natives need cardigans and hats. And that's only @ 2k miles.

[gness]

Summers in Canada could be really hot, Sandy...but it was a nice dry heat....it's the humidity that gets to me here....

[Peter Pedant]

badly

I was pondering exactly this as I worked in Egypt and find this heat 25'C oppressive - but since cats pant at 37'C and I saw a cat pant,
it was around 40'C

and we ended up sleeping on the roof as well....

[jno]

aircon, siestas, and to a certain degree acclimatisation. The Raj used to hop on a little choochoo train from Delhi up the hills to Shimla to function in summer.

Apparently there's a point around 104 or thereabouts where the heat suddenly tips over from being unpleasant to intolerable. Then I suppose you just employ slaves to do the work for you.

[woofgang]

Lots of things, acclimatisation, buildings designed for heat, clothing too, level of humidity, lifestyle in general.

[Old_Geezer]

Dry heat is more bearable than moist too.

[Daffy6543]

Some countries would think a temp of 25 was pretty average, nothing to worry them at all. I know a South African over here on work experience who was baffled as to why we brits were walking round it t shirts in temps of 20(ish), he was cold and wrapped up as if it were Autumn.

[Buenchico]

Humidity is probably as important as temperature. I was in Madrid around this time last year, where it was 37C and felt lovely because it was so dry. (Restaurants had misters outside, spraying tables and diners to increase the humidity because it was so dry!). I came back home, where it was only 27C, but very humid, and it felt awful.

The only time that I've felt really ill because of a combination of heat and humidity was when I visited Singapore which is, as near as damn it, bang on the equator. I could never live there!

[1ozzy]

As others have said, "It's the humidity that becomes oppressive".
36C - 40C isn't unusual here during summer, topping out at 48C - 50C but as we are "inland" there is little or no humidity and as such even the higher temperatures are quite bearable.
Further north east in Aus quite often it's cooler with higher humidity and very uncomfortable.

[Hypognosis]

Yup, latent heat of evaporation transfers heat away from the body but high humidity - the air is already saturated with about as much water vapour as it can hold - inhibits the evaporation and you just remain sweaty and uncomfortably hot.

Dry air aids evaporation and the sweat glands cool you the way they're meant to.

If the wind is blowing, that also aids evaporation but, if the air temperature is higher than body temperature then a moving column of it will actually transfer a net heat gain to the body.

I read a message thread one time where someone said that, in Singapore/SE Asia, urban folklore has it that you should not sit/sleep in front of a ventilation fan, because of the risk of heat stroke and backed this up with links to relevant news articles. But, in their case, air temps over 98.4F are commonplace. Here that would be a news event.

I could mention brown adipose tissue - which generates body heat (in addition to muscle activity). How much you have of it and its distribution around the body varies according to your ancestry. Generations spent near the equator mean you barely need it and genes tend to avoid wasting resources on things the body doesn't need (like cave dwelling creatures evolve to not have eyes).
Generations spent in northern Europe means we have more of it, bearing up in winter but suffering from the heat in summer.

80F indoors, here, at nighttime!

[ummmm]

I was in Gibraltar recently and it was 30+ everyday. It was really windy and I had to buy a cardigan....

[Prudie]

Acclimatisation partly but it's also a different kind of heat. It's been 28 in Dorset last couple of days - sticky, debilitating, knocks the life out of me but I'm used to those temps on holiday in Med and it's uplifting and I love it. Humidity might play a part, as do sea breezes.

[mikey4444]

I have heard this talk "dry heat" thing before. Twenty years ago, I went to Death Valley, in California for the first time. The temperature there was 120 degrees, with almost no humidity at all. In fact if we hadn't been present, there would have been 0% humidity ! But 120 degrees was almost intolerable. One of my party burned his hand, grabbing hold of the door handle of our rental car. We were in this fantastic place for 4 days and I would recommend everybody to go the National Park. But 120 degrees is terribly uncomfortable, dry or not. It is so hot in the summer months that some of the lodging isn't even open until the winter. Before AC was invented, this place was entirely uninhabitable, as most of the Far West would have been.

As well as the stunning scenery, my abiding memory of Death Valley was the constant hum of hundreds of AC units, everywhere we went. It kept us awake at nights it was so loud.

When I next visit, I shall make sure its winter instead !

[netibiza]

It was 36º here in Ibiza today (it's the humidity that makes it so bad!)and so unpleasant, but one needs a coffee and a chat with friends, then stagger home, fall into pool and then sit in cool bedroom watching TV for the rest of the day, family make their own food!

[sandyRoe]

They'd not be making cocido on a day like that :-)

[netibiza]

My daughter would! I hide!