In the capital of Arizona – with extreme temperatures that can reach 122°F during the day and don’t drop below 90°F at night – life is almost impossible. If blackouts were to knock out the air-conditioning, nearly half the population could end up hospitalized
And Bobby knew this shit like 20 years ago. It regularly gets into the low 100s in July and August in that region. It's not so terribly bad since it's dry heat, especially when there is wind. Arizona isn't even the highest risk area. The biggest issue in the US wet-bulb temps in the southeast.
The biggest issue in the US is wet-bulb temps in the southeast.
For people that aren't aware, wetbulb temps essentially measure how well you can cool yourself down by sweating. Humid air means sweating is less effective since it can't evaporate.
A wetbulb temp of 95°F (35°C) will kill someone in less than a workday if they're not given proper breaks.
Yeah, any wetbulb above 30°C (86 °F) is potentially fatal without lots of rest breaks and water and shade and such. 35°C is unsurvivable - and not something that happens naturally on Earth.
If you are discussing the affects of temperature on humans, you should use a human centric temperature scale, so I'd say that is already the appropriate unit.
Americans when faced with a Celsius measurement in the EU: "Oh, 32°C, that's about 90 degrees."
EU people when faced with Fahrenheit in an arricle about a place in the US: "Reeeeee, why isn't this in my own comfortable units that I like‽‽"
Look, guys, we need an entire generation to finally die before we can fix a lot of things here in the US. We've got larger problems than imperial or metric units right now. We're working on it, amd your petulant whining about units makes you look silly to a country of people who are used to converting between the two.
On the plus side Phoenix is going to be an absolute boon to future archaeologists. It's in the middle of a desert, which is great for preserving stuff, and when it depopulates nobody's going to move back in and wreck stuff up by living there.
Dubai's probably going to be another good one, though it's on a coast so that could cause other types of degradation.