High humidity doesn’t only give the perception that the weather is hot, it can also put strain on your body.

By Steff Gaulter

The weather this month is certainly a shock if you’re new to the region. The combination of the extreme heat and the humidity can take some getting used to.
It was August when my husband first landed in Doha more than a decade ago. While many things have changed radically since then, the weather has not. It was midnight as he stepped out of the plane onto the steps. He thought the air from the huge jet engines was blasting his skin, before he realised that no, the extreme heat was simply the weather.
My first experience of the Gulf was also in August. I was flying through Dubai, so left the plane through a passenger tunnel. I think things have changed since, but at the time I had to leave the arrivals terminal and walk around a corner to departures in order to change planes. I stepped outside and the heat was incredible. In an attempt to cool things down, fans had been fixed to the wall, which sprayed a fine mist of water at you.
I considered myself fairly well-travelled. I’d been to all sorts of countries from India to Uganda, but I’d never experienced anything like the weather in Dubai. Walking out into a stifling sauna, being attacked by a mist of water was unpleasant to say the least. Frankly I was glad to be getting on another plane and getting out of Dubai as soon as possible!
Now I’ve been in Doha for over eight years, the summer no longer comes as a surprise. As you’ve probably already noticed, not every day is the same; some are more bearable and less humid than others.
Humidity readings are usually given as a ‘relative humidity’, which is the amount of moisture in the air compared with how much there could be. It’s given as a percentage, with one hundred percent meaning the air is fully saturated. At this humidity you will be able to see the water in the air; it will either be raining or foggy. It’s also the humidity in your steamy bathroom after a hot shower.
You’ve probably noticed that the humidity increases dramatically in the evening. This is the time that your glasses are most likely to fog up when you leave the house, or your windows start to steam up on the outside. The reason for this is that warm air can hold more water than can cool air. This means that during the warmest part of the day, as the temperature soars, the air is capable of holding far more water than before. Assuming the amount of water in the air actually stays the same, as the air warms up, it will become less humid.
During the evening, the temperature falls away again. The amount of water in the air stays the same, but cooler air isn’t able to hold as much water. Therefore the cooler air will be closer to saturation, so it will be more humid. This is why things feel so much stickier in the evenings and overnight.
You and I can’t really perceive actual temperature, we feel heat as a combination of temperature, humidity and wind. The more humid it is, the hotter it feels. This July, the humidity set in early and was more persistent than many other years, making the month feel even hotter than usual.
High humidity doesn’t only give the perception that the weather is hot, it can also put strain on your body. If the air is laden with moisture, then extra water cannot evaporate into it very quickly. This means your sweat will evaporate slower and therefore your body will struggle to cool down. This is why humidity is dangerous; if your body is not able to cool down, your body temperature can become dangerously high. This is known as heatstroke and can put a strain on your heart, liver and kidneys. In severe cases it can even be life-threatening.
It was on a particularly humid evening a few years ago that I took my neighbour’s dog for a walk. Given the weather, it wasn’t really the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but fortunately it wasn’t a particularly long walk, so both the dog and I managed to escape unscathed. At the end of the unpleasant sweaty walk, I knocked on the door to return the four-legged friend and one of the children opened the door. He took one look at me and exclaimed, “Why are you all wet?” I will admit that I did look like I had just stepped out of the shower, but “95% humidity” probably wasn’t the answer he was expecting.
Fortunately, here in Doha, the worst of the humidity usually only lasts between mid-July and mid-September. After that the humidity drops and the temperatures gradually ease almost every week until January.
So although August may be the worst month weather-wise in Qatar, looking on the bright side, from here it’s all downhill towards winter and the better weather. I’m just grateful that the humidity is only with us for a small proportion of the year.

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