Interested in weather, meteorology and photography. Aviation weather observer.

Other account: @[email protected]

  • 21 Posts
  • 47 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Deme@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world🐸 time
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    4 months ago

    An extreme value is always only extreme in relation to some baseline. For temperatures it’s usually a value that departs far from the local average. With WBT it can also mean values that approach the limit of what the human physiology can handle, a value that is quite universal due to us all being of the same species. The body cannot adapt beyond the limits set by thermodynamics.

    Tropical and extreme aren’t mutually exclusive. +30°C in Antarctica would be both tropical and extreme. Both are used where applicable. A temperature can also be extreme without being tropical. No matter what Trump thinks, he doesn’t have the power to redefine (let alone erase) words.

    The wet bulb temp. in a proper sauna should get quite high, I don’t have exact numbers but above 70°C or so (dry temp. 90°C, relative humidity 50% would translate to a WBT of 74°C). In most contexts that would be extreme, but not here.


  • Deme@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world🐸 time
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    4 months ago

    *Extreme WBT’s

    A wet bulb thermometer measures wet bulb temperature (WBT), which is a metric that always exists and can always be measured. It only gets bad when the WBT reaches an extreme value, as is the case for basically all environmental metrics. Saying that wet bulb temperature is lethal is like saying that temperature is lethal. Look out for temperature! I’m sorry for the rant so I’ll try to keep this short, but “wet bulb” by itself in this context is an inane shorthand that lacks all the significant words and muddles the meaning of those words that are in it. Scientists talk about Extreme WBT events, because that’s what they are. A less of a mouthful would be nice for science communication, but I don’t want it to come at the expense of words losing meaning like that.

    Heatwave is a nice and descriptive word for one type of an extreme temperature event. Cold snap is another one. I’m glad neither is called “temperature event” because that would be dumb.






















  • Deme@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldIf only it was like that
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    2 years ago

    The notations can be confusing, especially around noon and midnight. Is midnight am or pm when it’s equally distant to both the previous and the next noon? Why does 12am not follow 11am???

    Where I live we use 12hr time in casual spoken language but pretty much always specify the time of day as well, like eight in the evening or twelve at midnight. But for anything written or even remotely formal, 24h time is used for obvious reasons.


  • Sure, but the vast majority of people live in low lying areas and even then it doesn’t shift that drastically. You need to climb a mountain to see the difference when it comes to applications of daily life.

    Although now that I think about it. The same criticism applies to pretty much every definition of temperature that is based on the behaviour of matter. This also applies to Kelvin. Temperature is a property of matter and every type of matter behaves differently.


  • The thing to remember is that air is a great insulator. Air at 100°C isn’t nearly as bad as say water or metal at the same temperature against the skin. In fact, the air that comes in contact with the comparatively cold human skin will cool down rapidly, forming a layer of cooler air around you and lessening the sensation of heat further.