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Bangalore seems to be the only climate among the biggest 10-15 cities in India that is actually reasonable, except for 3 months during the hot season as the elevation moderates the rest of the year to a reasonable level.
All the other biggest cities like Surat, Ahmedabad etc look even worse than Mumbai (which itself is basically 10 months of days when there is a heat advisory in the Deep South of the US).
Ahmedabad has had a mid-day heat index of around 120 degrees every day in the last week, with night times "cooling down" to "feels like" temperature of 100 degrees in the middle of the night. Surat seems to be similar.
Delhi – marginally semi-arid or dry subhumid, though it varies from arid to humid in different years because the driest year of 1929 had just 261 millimetres and the wettest year of 1933 saw 1,583 millimetres – is much hotter than anywhere in the US outside of the desert southwest. It averages over 40˚C (over 105˚F) in May and June during the “hot season” (pre-monsoon). I recall a period one June where Delhi never fell below 30˚C or 86˚F overnight for over a week.
In fact the globe’s highest wet-bulb temperatures, including hot marginal sea coast deserts and the perhumid tropics, occur in the Indo-Gangetic Plain where 30˚C (86˚F) wet-bulb is normally reached every year. That is only 4˚C or 7˚F below what scientists consider uninhabitable, and it is generally believed wet-bulb temperatures above this lethal threshold allowed reptiles to dominate over mammals and birds throughout the Mesozoic.
No wonder the British moved the capital of the Indian Raj to Shimla (which has a very good climate by Asian standards and is one of the very few places in Asia that possibly does not have worse weather than England). Moving from a 40˚C sauna to a merely very warm 25˚C must have been a delight not only for them, but those wealthier Indians who could afford it.
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Do you know Shimla? And is it the beautiful place that it is represented to be on the British series Indian Summers? (That series was set in Shimla in the mid 1930s but the show was actually filmed in Malaysia, so ....) Also, is there any significant British population in Shimla anymore? I am interested in visiting and possibly living in the place, because of the climate. I am not Indian, but American. I speak several languages and have lived abroad for many years, in half a dozen countries, and speak several languages, just not Hindi, although I could learn it I'm sure.
Just need to know if there is any sort of Anglo/Indian culture there anymore, as there was in the era of the British Raj. thanks
Yep: I wonder if Vancouver had a freak humid heat wave (highs of 35C with dewpoints of 25C paired with overnight lows around 28C), how they would fare since most people don't have AC.
deneb would probably enjoy it but those who are not heat lover nor used to it might have a hard time.
Or we could also debate Vancouver without heat vs. Chennai without AC.
Vancouver and the Lower Fraser Valley area average slightly higher summer dew points than the Puget Sound and Willamette Valley areas in the US Pacific NW. I always thought it was noticeably more humid in BC than in Washington or Oregon whenever visiting Canada during the summer.
I'm travelling through India at the moment. Bangalore was fairly comfortable due to being 900 m above sea level. Hyderabad was hot but not too humid. Mumbai is just like Bangkok except without the widespread AC that makes Bangkok tolerable. Tomorrow I'm going to the desert state of Rajasthan which should be very hot but also dry.
Despite the heat nearly everyone wears jeans and long sleeves. The women wear full traditional dress comprised of several layers. No one seems to care.
There's a point where it's so hot that wearing loose, long-sleeved clothing lets you cool down faster than leaving your skin uncovered.
Why then do people in Saudi Arabia dress the way they do?
There's another way that heat can be transferred: radiation. (Actually, there's many more ways, e.g. evaporation of sweat, but I won't talk about them.) Your body is always radiating heat away (this is why people show up on infrared cameras). The sun is also radiating heat away. When you're standing in direct sunlight, the sun will transfer heat to you much more quickly (via radiation) than you will lose (via radiation). So whenever it's sunny out, you will heat up more (via radiation) wearing shorts and a T-shirt than pants and a sweatshirt...
if you are hiking through a rain forest, it's super hot and humid, but you probably aren't getting a lot of direct sunlight, so radiation isn't really a factor. Therefore it makes sense to wear less. In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, the temperature is often so hot that you won't really lose any heat to the surrounding air. Therefore radiation becomes the main concern, so it makes more sense to cover up.
This doesn't consider evaporation though. If it's hot and dry you need at least some skin so evaporation can perform well. Usually exposed arms is all you need. Linen pants, a thin button down long sleeve shirt with sleeves rolled up partially, a hat, shirt unbuttoned several notches so evap cooling can hit your core body, and a wet handerchief wrapped around your neck will keep you cool all the way to 120F.
Also in hot/humid climates you need to wear the same (pants with long sleeves) because of the mosquitoes. In some cases you need to button up all the way so the mosquitoes don't get you. In desert climates sandals work because you don't want sand in your socks. In humid climates waterproof shoes are the best protection. Foot rot is real in tropical humid climates.
I have convertible hiking pants/shirt that I wear for hiking in hot conditions. If I need more evaporation I roll up sleeves and remove lower portion of pants. If I need sun protection I roll them down. In humid climates with mosquitoes I am fully covered, I dislike mosquitoes.
When I sleep in a tent I sleep nude with only a light sheet when camping in hot conditions with the windows down but the screens on. I sleep like a baby.
Would Bangladesh be hotter on average due to lower elevation?
Many African and Southeast Asian countries seem hotter on average than India, which extends to ~35N or so and has many high-altitude areas (although the vast majority of the population lives in the scorching lowland areas). Unsure about Bangladesh specifically, Northern India is chillier in winter but also hotter in summer due to being drier while India south of a line from Gujarat to Orissa is hotter overall so I would guess about even.
Places in the Sahel like Niger, Chad, Mali etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niamey#Climate are similar to inland India during the summer but have a weaker cool season than most of the subcontinent (and hotter summers than the coastal areas that are as mild/milder in winter)-- compare to the median Indian climate which would probably be similar to somewhere like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal#Climate (~26c annual mean) Most of SE Asia like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phnom_Penh#Climate cools off less than central and Northern India during the winter, so these places have warmer annual means despite less intense summers than interior areas. Much of Latin America's population is in areas that are elevated (Bogotá, Mexico City, even São Paulo and Caracas to a lesser extent) or further poleward (Buenos Aires) but there are still areas with deep-tropical weather (like a 26c avg in January vs ~18c average for India).
Suspect these countries at least are warmer on average by annual mean, although many of the places closer to the Equator get less intense summer heat than most of India does.
Mali*
Niger*
Chad*
Sudan*
Burkina Faso
South Sudan
Gambia
Liberia
Ghana
Togo
Benin
Sierra Leone
DRC
Nigeria (India-like heat in the North)
Indonesia
Cambodia
Malaysia
Singapore
Thailand
Phillipines
Myanmar
Pamama
probably quite a few Carribean nations as well
*'d countries have intense 40c+ summer heat like much of interior India
Places like Kuwait also get more intense summer heat than anywhere in India, although winter is also cooler than most of the country.
I think there are places in the African savannah that get a lot hotter year round. The northern parts of India can get quite cold during winter nights with frosts being commonplace.
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