You may have already heard of acclimatization: it is the ability of an individual to gradually adapt to a new and thermally uncomfortable climate according to their standards (high humidity, dryness, etc.).
The study of acclimatization developed greatly in a colonial context, in particular to try to understand why the colonists suffered much more from the heat and humidity than the local inhabitants.
Very important geographers were interested in the problem of acclimatization in the 20th century, such as Max Sorre in France or Ellsworth Huntington in the United States.
Work from this period estimated that an individual needed 2 to 6 weeks to be fully acclimatized to a new climate.
If this notion of acclimatization is today a little forgotten, the phenomenon of adaptation to heat is taken into account in the regulatory thermal calculation engines which now include “adaptive comfort”.
Most recently, an article published in MIT Technology Review highlighted the importance of the capacity for acclimatization, while explaining that its mechanisms had been relatively little studied (overproduction of plasma, acceleration of perspiration, etc.): https://lnkd.in/ecbPJ4Jr
However, the ability to acclimatize is limited, as evidenced by the victims following heat stroke during the last harvests in France...
In short, if acclimatization offers a certain margin of tolerance to heat, we must not believe that we will be able to miraculously adapt to global warming of several degrees without doing anything.
On the contrary, integrating the phenomenon of acclimatization is a way of promoting the bioclimatic approach and enriching adaptation strategies to climate change.
Sources: M. Sorre, E. Huntington, J. Dreyfus
Image: Unsplash, Nathan Dumlao