How (un)bearable is humidity in Taiwan ?

Anyone else feeling extremely high humidity today?

Well…it is (still) raining.

I mean excessively humid. I can’t see myself in the mirror at work its so wet and all glass picture frames are wet.

Global warming and too much concrete, tall buildings and air conditioning makes the ambient temp even higher in the cities.

I don’t think there’s a spike in the use of concrete, tall buildings or air conditioning since the 80s.

You saying there isn’t more and more of all three of these things?

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If you look at the chart, the rise in temperature from 1911 to 1960 can hardly be explained away by concrete buildings, tall buildings and air conditioning. As Taiwan was still mostly rural, and for a large chunk of that time tall buildings and air conditioning didn’t exist.

Most of the development happened during the 70s to the 90s. If tall concrete buildings and the use of air conditioning are the deciding factors in the rise of Taiwan’s temperature, then the exponential increase of those things during this period should have resulted in an equally sharp increase in temperature. However, the increase remains linear, about the same gradient as it had been from 1920 to the 60s.

So from that chart I don’t really see a strong correlation between tall concrete buildings and the use of air conditioning to the trend of the temperature’s linear annual increase.

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Physically you can feel it though. Theres no breeze on a summers day in taipei. If you are walking the streets theres no relief from it, other than walking inside to an air conditioned building.

I read that adapting to hot weather basically means you will just sweat quicker. As sweating is the bodys way of keeping cool. And it flows more easily in high humidity. So while i can get used to it in a sense, its not like i can force my body to adapt. In the summers here im always gonna be an uncomfortable sweaty mess.

There’s more concrete and more tall buildings and more air conditioning meaning more heat island effect for people living in the cities and developed environment and more heat being absorbed and retained .

That anybody could say that’s not the case…hard to believe.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-4-431-53904-9_12

Of course this is obvious if one lives in the countryside as it cools down faster in the evenings and there is more wind.

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I’m struggling with the heat and humidity this year not normally a problem for me could be my age?

According to laughable Daily Mail “expert”thousands in the U.K. could die from this range of heat.

Seems particularly bad this year.

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I pretty much agree. This is the first year that I’ve left the AC running essentially 24/7 (usually I would at least turn it off when sleeping), and I haven’t been going out much because doing so while wearing a mask is a total drag, especially when accustomed to constant AC.

I definitely found previous years in Taipei (and Nanjing, which is also really humid) more tolerable. The long and wet winter/spring probably makes it feel worse now as well, and at least last summer when the outdoor mask mandate was introduced it seemed like a new short-term thing rather than an endless and pointless theatrical performance we’re all having to frustratingly participate in.

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Hopefully it will be better come September.

I’m betting on November (because :flight_departure: :thailand: :grin:).

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What’s that sound? Is that God laughing…? :sweat_smile:

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Darn, perhaps I should delay my trip to October …

It’s much like Florida the weather in Taiwan and somewhat similar to Spain except more humid

Your cycling exploits are quite impressive (as posted in other threads) but I imagine yes this will take a toll at this time of year.

@ranlee : how does one survive the summer without starting every day at 3:30 am? :grin:

Guy

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It’s not just the Daily Pail saying Britain is going to hit a record high of 40 degrees this week.

That’s right, Daily mail expert I was referring to.
How do you become s British tabloid “anonymous expert “ ?