Today, the temperature is 41 degrees C, or 102 degrees F. Tomorrow it will be 109 degrees F. To give an accurate impression of how hot this is, here's a list of countries that have never, in their history, experienced a temperature as high as today's temperature in Delhi: Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK.
The hottest place in the United States is Death Valley, which is also a national park (I know where I'm spending my next vacation!). Like the Thar, Death Valley is a desert.
High school biology textbooks used to refer to the fact that humans have an unusually narrow range of comfortable temperatures. After living in Chicago and Delhi, I understand what they mean. Extreme cold, like we regularly experienced in Chicago, led to numbness, stiff joints, respiratory problems. Extreme heat leads to weight loss, headaches, dehydration, swelling. Because it gets so hot, Indians have developed an entire lore around how to stay cool. For example, the difference between 'warm' and 'cool' foods. To an American, this seems like bunk. However, in India it actually makes a difference, as anyone who has eaten a heavy, spicy meal outdoors in Delhi summer can attest. The after effects of a greasy Hyderabadi biryani, on a 100+ degree day, can be physically painful.
Another question that scientists have sought to answer for years is: to what extent does weather affect the national psyche? Are Indians warmer people - whatever that means - because we live in warmer weather?
Here's an interesting fact. In the States, we frequently refer to SADD - a neurological disorder in which winter weather causes depression. In India, we don't have SADD, because we don't have winter. So not all extreme weather has the same effect on behavior and mentality.
According to this study (hidden behind a paywall), climate might have played a role in the European witch hunts. The witch hunts ran from the 16th through 18th centuries. Europe went through the Little Ice Age, a period of unusually cold weather, during that exact same period. Is this coincidence or correlation? Did the mass murders of many innocent women arise from an unexpected cold spell?
According to another study , there is a negative correlation between sunshine and the "default risk on equity returns." Which I take to mean that the sunnier the weather, the more likely you are to see the fruits of your stock market investments. Unfortunately, this theory fails to explain Greece, Zimbabwe, or the hottest place on Earth: the Libyan desert.
Clearly, there is an upper bound on how much sunshine makes for a good trading environment. Stock marketeers tend to be a superstitious lot, though, so this doesn't surprise me.
However, this next study finds that "cloudy conditions near the firm's headquarters do not provide profitable trading opportunities." It's unclear from the quote, but essentially the authors find that although there is a local effect on stock trading (local phenomena influence behavior) there doesn't seem to be any such effect for weather.
Another fascinating finding is the following: "people interviewed [for medical school] on rainy days tend to receive lower ratings than people interviewed on sunny days." Whence the bias? Are interviewees in a worse mood because of the rain? Or is it the interviewer whose SADD will make prospective students sad?
Then there's this study, which found that shoppers who were in a foul mood due to bad weather actually had a better memory for the things they saw in the store.
So the takeaway of all this seems to be: when it rains, skip your college interview and go shopping instead. Invest more when it's sunny, but not too much more. And climate change might be good for feminism.
No comments:
Post a Comment