Some parts of the United States are hitting temperatures "too hot for safe fan use" twice as often as they did decades ago, new research sho
Some parts of the United States are hitting temperatures "too hot for safe fan use" twice as often as they did decades ago, new research shows. Analyzing hourly weather data from the past 20 years and between 1950 and 1969, Luke Parsons, a climate scientist at Duke University, and colleagues found that more US residents are being exposed more often to temperatures that are too hot for electric fans to cool people down – and might even be dangerous. "We find that the geographic extent of temperatures too high for safe fan use is expanding, and the number of safe hours is decreasing," Parsons and colleagues explain in their published paper. "In particularly hot locations, most afternoon hours during the hottest months of the year can exceed [safe] thresholds," they add.
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