Why does this UK heatwave feel so intense? 🥵 The Smith School’s Dr Mireia Ginesta explains how prolonged heat, high humidity and warm nights can make extreme temperatures harder for our bodies to cope with - and why climate change is expected to make heatwaves like this more frequent and more severe in the UK. TRANSCRIPT: This heatwave feels particularly exceptional in the UK because of a combination of prolonged, extreme heat and high levels of humidity. The heat itself is associated with a high-pressure system, and in this system, the air sinks, it gets compressed, and it warms further up as it descends. This heatwave is particularly uncomfortable because our bodies rely on sweat to cool down, and if the air is very humid and it’s very hot, sweat struggles to evaporate, which means that our natural cooling system is less efficient. So, the fact that these conditions persist over consecutive days and nights makes the situation even worse because, basically, our bodies accumul...