Are Fans Useless in Hot Temperatures? New Research Reveals Surprising Results

Jakarta –

When the weather is hot, turn on fan become the mainstay of many people. However, according to scientists, fans tend to be useless in very hot temperatures.

Severe heat waves are becoming more frequent due to global warming, so if there is no air conditioning, you can use a fan. Well, new research led by Robert Meade at the Human and Environmental Physiology Research Unit at the University of Ottawa, used modeling of human heat balance to test the effectiveness of fans.

In a number of scenarios, it was found that fans did not significantly reduce core temperature at high heat. And of course, cooling with a fan is not comparable to AC.

“Fans do increase sweat evaporation, but this effect is not strong enough to reduce your internal body temperature significantly when the weather is very hot, above 33-35 C,” Meade was quoted as saying detikINET from Newsweek.

“In older people, whose ability to sweat is reduced, fans provide less cooling benefit. In fact, even in younger adults, fans only provide a fraction of the cooling power of AC,” he explained.

So, fans can indeed cool well at moderate temperatures, but it’s a different story if the temperature is very hot. The latest research, published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health, assesses that health institutions should continue to urge the public to avoid using fans when temperatures are higher than 35 C.

This is especially true in individuals with impaired sweating capacity, such as adults 65 years of age or older. Increasing access to other cooling methods, such as air conditioning or evaporative cooling, is recommended.

“Keeping indoor temperatures cool is important for vulnerable individuals, but cooling strategies such as air conditioning can be costly and harmful to the environment,” Meade said.

“The fan still plays an important role in this, because the fan can be effective at cooling lower temperatures, meaning we don’t need to set the AC too low. However, when the weather gets very hot, the fan alone won’t work,” he continued.

Previous research suggests that as climate change worsens, extreme heat waves will become more frequent. This means that people have to adapt to changes in temperature.

Watch Video “BMKG: 2024 Estimated to be Hotter than 2023”

(fyk/fyk)

2024-04-07 23:50:55
#Fans #Hot #Weather