The humidity makes the Shanghai heat more unbearable
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“My office felt like a steamer Monday morning,” Chinese influencer Bi Dao wrote in a social media post in August. He took a drink from a supposedly cold water dispenser: it was 40.8°C (105°F). Bi, who lives in Hangzhou, the capital of China’s eastern coastal region, decided to walk around the city with a temperature gun, pointing at things to find out exactly how hot they got. “The ground was 72.6°C, the seat of a shared bike was 56.5°C, the railing at the subway station was 45°C, the bark of the tree was also 38.7°C,” he wrote. He ended his message by thanking Willis Carr for inventing the air conditioner.
Hangzhou is known for its beautiful lake, grand pagoda and green tea farms, not its heat. But what Bi saw was just one of the 60 “high temperature days” that grilled the city and its 12.5 million people this year that topped -35°C (95°F). Hangzhou is not alone. Many cities around the world are feeling the heat. Things are getting so bad More and more people are exposed to temperatures beyond human endurance.
Already, such conditions kill about half a million every year. This will inevitably increase as climate change increases the number and intensity of heat waves around the world. Cities are on the front lines of this unfolding crisis. And China’s sprawling, dense megacities are catching up. And to see what we’re up to…
