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How Hot Can It Get Before Humans Can’t Survive?
Not as simple as it sounds
The planet has been gradually warming since at least 1880. In the past 150 years, global temperatures have risen 0.14° Fahrenheit per decade, resulting in 2023 being the hottest year on record. This warming trend has sparked alarm in the scientific community and has provoked a global backlash against fossil fuels. As the planet continues to warm, it raises an obvious question. How hot can it get before humans can no longer survive?
This is an interesting question and one that has kept people up at night. Is the planet ever going to get so hot that humans can no longer survive? The answer to that question is complicated, but the good news is that such a future is a long way off, if it even exists at all.
A combination of factors influences the answer. First, you have to understand that human resistance to heat is based on wet bulb temperature, an obscure way of measuring heat, and not air temperature or even heat index. Second, the ability to migrate and adapt makes human extinction due to global heat extremely unlikely.
The Easy Answer
According to scientific studies, the human body starts to break down during prolonged exposure to temperatures between 40℃ (104F) and 50℃ (122F). If you are caught in extreme…
