ArticleScience advances2020
The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance.
Article in Science advances, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 131 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
131 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Evaluating the Impact of Heat Stress on Placental Function: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Pooled it
- Extreme temperatures and the epithelial barrier theory.Seminars in immunopathology · 2026Review
- Article
- Age-specific exposure to human-induced increases in humid heat.Science advances · 2026Article
- Age-specific climate sensitivity of respiratory hospitalizations in a tropical coastal city: 20-year Random Forest forecasts.International journal of biometeorology · 2026Article
- Review
- Differential Health Impacts of Short-Term Particulate Matter Exposure in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions: A Scoping Review.GeoHealth · 2026Review
- Cause-specific heat-related mortality in Rio de Janeiro city: Comparing exposure metrics and the role of exposure duration.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2026Article
- Dense canopies reverse the cooling effect of urban greening in humid cities.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The physiology of survival: Heat.Experimental physiology · 2026Article
- HomoTherm: An Open-Source Approach to Modelling Heat Exchange in Humans and Other Hominins in Diverse Environments.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Association Between Observed Climate Change and Cardiovascular Disease in the United States.GeoHealth · 2026Article
- XIS-humidity: a daily spatiotemporal machine-learning model for dew point in the contiguous United States.Environmental research communications · 2026Article
- Deadly heat stress conditions are already occurring for submission to Nature Communications.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Climate reparations for threats to health.BMJ global health · 2026Review
- Contrary effects of soil moisture-atmosphere feedback on dry and humid heatwaves.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The future of European outdoor summer sports through the lens of 50 years of the tour de France.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Anthropogenic climate change drives rising global heat stress and its spatial inequality.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Heatwaves and occupational health and safety in Italy: the role of trade unions and social dialogue.Industrial health · 2026Article
- Emerging heat stress patterns across India under future climate scenarios.Scientific reports · 2026Article
71 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans' ability to efficiently shed heat has enabled us to range over every continent, but a wet-bulb temperature (TW) of 35°C marks our upper physiological limit, and much lower values have serious health and productivity impacts. Climate models project the first 35°C TW occurrences by the mid-21st century. However, a comprehensive evaluation of weather station data shows that some coastal subtropical locations have already reported a TW of 35°C and that extreme humid heat overall has more than doubled in frequency since 1979. Recent exceedances of 35°C in global maximum sea surface temperature provide further support for the validity of these dangerously high TW values. We find the most extreme humid heat is highly localized in both space and time and is correspondingly substantially underestimated in reanalysis products. Our findings thus underscore the serious challenge posed by humid heat that is more intense than previously reported and increasingly severe.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.