We’re having a heat wave. During these heat waves, Jim occasionally gets requests for the code to estimate wet bulb globe temperature and he mentioned a recent request during dinner last night. Wet bulb globe temperature was developed by the military to try to estimate heat load on people working in the sunlight. (It’s also useful to know if you are playing sports.)
But it’s difficult to measure and many facilities don’t set themselves up to do so. He got asked if he could work out a method based on more common measurements. The code is based on this paper Modeling the wet bulb globe temperature using standard meteorological measurements. Evidently, this later paper recommends Jim’s method for outdoor applications.
Anyway, I thought some of you might be interested in this, particularly if you need to work outdoors or if you have kids who might end up suiting up for football during any heat wave that might occur in August.
Sounds interesting, but regrettably behind a paywall so quick utility seems out of picture; But one can google; Quick check of Argonne pubs didn’t show a TM.
[Off topic but of interest] Argonne also generated some Liljegren’s at PNL; Particularly interesting that one was a double shell tanks report…For some time,I’ve been meaning to ask if you have followed the tanks related activities since you left. Somehow I suspected that you are not without opinions on the weapons complex’s environmental status/activities;o). [Just curious since over the years I’ve worked on/at Hf, WV, SR, OR and several old ME sites.] Might make for interesting ‘off-topic’ posting…someday.
Regards
mwgrant
Nope. Haven’t followed much.
On the web bulb globe temperature: I’m posting so people who might be interested in computing might look up. Otherwise… paper sort of dry. I mean…. other than the practical output, do you have a burning need to know the wet bulb globe temperatures. (People at various sites wanted a way to get it to apply things like OSHA standards etc.)
lucia
No burning needs here (or steamy ones). Actually it is the computing that is of primary interest to me. I’m always interested how people approach computing in a given situation. Projects of limited scope as the case here are of interest because one can potentially get into it (and out of it) in a hurry. As Mosher would say, “Show me the code [and docs.]”
Things got more interesting when I found myself back into tanks world as a result of casual non-burning googling.
“Nope. Haven’t followed much.”
Noted.
Measuring wet bulb temperatures and dew points brings back memories of times long ago when we had to measure the critical humidity in a confined space where a sling hydrometer would not be practical. As I recall we used a chilled mirror, a light and reflectance measurement to determine the condensation temperature. It was accurate as long as the mirror stayed clean. As I recall the wet bulb method was the most accurate if you did not kill someone with it, but I could wrong.
The chilled mirror fogging up is the principle of the only really accurate measurements of dew point and relative humidity. Much better than wet bulb but orders of magnitude more expensive. The best one is the Snow White by Meteolabs
Wet bulb temperature excursions are really scary, perhaps the most scary thing in anyone contemplating whether there are significant catastrophic AGW scenarios. Aboe 35 C wb for any period of time and you are dead. Sherwood and Huber had a paper on this in 2010 which Eli commented on but one of the anonybunnies made it worse
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It’s the creeping statistical hints between the lines of this paper that really bother me. Long before or even if we never see broad areas permanently enter a existentially threatening torrid regime, what about excursions? For instance, Pakistan this year has seen record temperatures approaching 54 degrees C in places where many people live, fortunately with lower humidity and only for handful of days but what about when/if such aberrations extend to a handful of weeks and are accompanied by inexorably increasing humidity? The resulting disaster would cause migrations. The worst-case scenario in Sherwood and Huber would not have to happen before we effectively lose major swathes of territory for year-round habitability.