India’s Humidity Is Dangerously High, And Increasing (2024)
Yet Avikal Somvanshi can just about live with 50°C heat in Delhi (where a dedicated heatstroke clinic opened in May amidst a brutal heatwave). What Somvanshi can’t handle is increased humidity, when “Delhi turns into a sauna.” “You can’t really do anything,” he says. “You just have to sit in front of a fan and wait for it to pass.” However, media attention peaks not with the highest humidity, in July and August, but with the highest temperatures, in May and June. This is a grave mistake, warns Somvanshi, who leads the Urban Lab at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based research organization. When people are somewhat acclimatized to very high temperatures already, “going to 50 is more of a psychological shock” than a physiological one, Somvanshi believes. But “the humidity shock to the body is very intense.” Yet humidity remains under-researched and under-appreciated. This is a troubling gap, given that humid heat is more dangerous than dry heat.
