B1 · Intermediate
12 min
climatepublic healthurban lifeasia pacific
Hotter Than Anyone Still Living Has Seen
Ciento cuarenta y dos años sin un día así
Hong Kong's Observatory recorded 36.9 degrees Celsius yesterday, the highest temperature since records began in 1884. Fletcher and Octavio dig into extreme heat, public health, and what it means to live in one of the world's densest cities when the thermometer breaks every record it has ever set.
El observatorio de Hong Kong registró ayer 36,9 grados centígrados, la temperatura más alta desde que empezaron los registros en 1884. Fletcher y Octavio hablan sobre el calor extremo, la salud pública y lo que significa vivir en una de las ciudades más densas del mundo cuando el termómetro rompe todos los récords.
5 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| golpe de calor | heat stroke | El médico dijo que el trabajador tenía un golpe de calor porque estuvo mucho tiempo bajo el sol. |
| sensación térmica | feels-like temperature / heat index | La temperatura era de 34 grados, pero la sensación térmica era de 40 porque había mucha humedad. |
| isla de calor urbano | urban heat island | En el centro de la ciudad hace más calor que en el campo porque existe el efecto de isla de calor urbano. |
| ola de calor | heat wave | Durante la ola de calor del verano pasado, los hospitales recibieron muchos más pacientes de lo normal. |
| de golpe | suddenly / all at once | De golpe, empezó a llover muy fuerte y todos corrieron a buscar refugio. |
Thirty-six point nine degrees Celsius in Hong Kong yesterday.
That's 98.4 Fahrenheit.
And the reason that number matters isn't just that it's hot.
It's that it's the hottest day recorded there since 1884.
Sí, y 1884 es mucho tiempo.
Yes, and 1884 is a long time.
Ciento cuarenta y dos años de registros, y nunca llegó tan alto.
A hundred and forty-two years of records, and it never reached that high.
Eso no es un accidente, Fletcher.
That's not a coincidence, Fletcher.
Eso es una señal muy seria.
That's a very serious signal.
A hundred and forty-two years of data.
Think about everything that happened in that window.
Two world wars, a Japanese occupation, the handover to China in 1997.
And through all of it, the thermometer never once touched this number.
El Observatorio de Hong Kong empezó a medir la temperatura en 1884 porque el puerto era muy importante para el comercio internacional.
The Hong Kong Observatory started measuring temperature in 1884 because the port was very important for international trade.
Necesitaban información del clima para los barcos.
They needed weather information for the ships.
Pero ahora esos mismos datos nos dicen algo muy diferente.
But now those same records are telling us something very different.
Data collected to protect merchant shipping, now telling us the planet is cooking.
There's something almost poetic about that, and not in a good way.
Hong Kong tiene un clima subtropical.
Hong Kong has a subtropical climate.
Normalmente hace mucho calor en verano, con mucha humedad.
It's normally very hot in summer, with a lot of humidity.
Pero 36,9 grados con esa humedad es diferente.
But 36.9 degrees with that humidity is different.
El cuerpo humano no puede enfriarse bien cuando el aire también está muy húmedo.
The human body can't cool itself properly when the air is also very humid.
Right, and that's the part that gets buried in the headline.
The number on the thermometer is one thing.
The number your body actually experiences, when you factor in humidity, is something else entirely.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Los meteorólogos hablan de la 'sensación térmica', que puede ser cinco o diez grados más alta que la temperatura real.
Meteorologists talk about the 'feels-like temperature', which can be five or ten degrees higher than the actual temperature.
En Hong Kong ayer, la sensación térmica era de más de cuarenta grados.
In Hong Kong yesterday, the feels-like temperature was over forty degrees.
Forty degrees perceived heat in one of the most densely populated places on earth.
Hong Kong has about seven million people packed into a relatively small area.
That's not an abstract climate statistic at that point, that's a public health emergency.
Y muchas personas en Hong Kong viven en apartamentos muy pequeños, sin buena ventilación.
And many people in Hong Kong live in very small apartments with poor ventilation.
Algunos edificios son muy viejos.
Some buildings are very old.
No tienen aire acondicionado, o el aire acondicionado es muy caro para pagar.
They don't have air conditioning, or air conditioning is too expensive to run.
Para esa gente, el calor extremo es peligroso.
For those people, extreme heat is dangerous.
The subdivided flats.
I've reported from Hong Kong a few times and I've been inside those spaces.
We're talking about rooms the size of a large closet, sometimes carved out of industrial buildings, with no windows.
In that kind of heat, they become ovens.
Hay aproximadamente doscientas mil personas que viven en esas condiciones en Hong Kong.
There are approximately two hundred thousand people living in those conditions in Hong Kong.
Son personas mayores, trabajadores pobres, inmigrantes.
They are elderly people, poor workers, immigrants.
Son las personas que más sufren cuando hace mucho calor.
They are the people who suffer most when it gets very hot.
And the elderly specifically.
The research on heat mortality is pretty unambiguous on this.
People over seventy-five have a dramatically higher risk of dying during extreme heat events because the body's ability to regulate temperature degrades with age.
Sí, y Hong Kong tiene una población que envejece rápidamente.
Yes, and Hong Kong has a rapidly aging population.
Muchas personas mayores viven solas.
Many elderly people live alone.
No tienen familia cerca.
They don't have family nearby.
Cuando hace mucho calor, nadie sabe si están bien o si necesitan ayuda.
When it's very hot, nobody knows if they're okay or if they need help.
That social isolation problem showed up catastrophically in Paris in 2003.
Fifteen thousand people died in France that summer, and a huge proportion of them were elderly people living alone who simply weren't checked on for days.
Yo recuerdo ese verano.
I remember that summer.
En España también murió mucha gente, quizás dos mil personas más que en un año normal.
In Spain a lot of people died too, maybe two thousand more than in a normal year.
Era agosto, y muchos médicos y enfermeras estaban de vacaciones.
It was August, and many doctors and nurses were on vacation.
Los hospitales no estaban preparados para tantos pacientes.
The hospitals weren't prepared for so many patients.
The vacation problem.
It's almost darkly comic, isn't it?
The continent shuts down for August and then August decides to kill people.
No es cómico para las familias.
It's not funny for the families.
Pero sí, había algo muy absurdo en eso.
But yes, there was something very absurd about it.
Después de 2003, Francia cambió su sistema de salud pública para el verano.
After 2003, France changed its public health system for the summer.
Crearon un plan especial para las olas de calor.
They created a special plan for heat waves.
España también hizo cambios.
Spain also made changes.
Twenty years later, and you wonder how much of that institutional memory has actually held.
Because what we're seeing now with Hong Kong, and frankly across all of subtropical Asia, is that the baseline is shifting faster than the preparations are.
El problema es que los planes de salud pública usaron los datos del pasado.
The problem is that public health plans used past data.
Decían: 'si la temperatura llega a 35 grados, hacemos esto'.
They said: 'if the temperature reaches 35 degrees, we do this'.
Pero ahora 35 grados ya no es una situación de emergencia, es simplemente un martes de agosto.
But now 35 degrees is no longer an emergency situation, it's just a Tuesday in August.
Just a Tuesday in August.
That framing is bleak and accurate.
Hong Kong también tiene un problema específico con la isla de calor urbano.
Hong Kong also has a specific problem with the urban heat island effect.
Los edificios son muy altos y muy juntos.
The buildings are very tall and very close together.
El calor del sol entra entre los edificios pero no puede salir fácilmente.
The sun's heat enters between the buildings but can't escape easily.
Y por la noche, el hormigón y el cristal liberan todo el calor que guardaron durante el día.
And at night, the concrete and glass release all the heat they stored during the day.
And there's no relief at night, which is actually when heat kills.
People can survive a hot day if they get a cool night to recover.
When nighttime temperatures stay high, the body never resets and the cumulative stress becomes fatal.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y el aire acondicionado crea otro problema.
And air conditioning creates another problem.
Cuando muchos edificios usan mucho aire acondicionado al mismo tiempo, las máquinas lanzan caliente aire a la calle.
When many buildings use a lot of air conditioning at the same time, the machines push hot air into the street.
Entonces la ciudad se pone más caliente afuera, y la gente necesita más aire acondicionado adentro.
So the city gets hotter outside, and people need more air conditioning inside.
Es un círculo.
It's a cycle.
You're cooling your apartment by heating the street for your neighbor.
And most of that electricity in Hong Kong still comes from fossil fuels, so you're also warming the planet to cool your room.
The feedback loops here are genuinely dizzying.
Hay soluciones, pero son difíciles.
There are solutions, but they're difficult.
Algunas ciudades en Asia pusieron más árboles en las calles, pintaron los tejados de blanco para reflejar el sol, o crearon 'corredores de viento' en el diseño urbano.
Some cities in Asia planted more trees in the streets, painted roofs white to reflect the sun, or created 'wind corridors' in urban planning.
Pero en Hong Kong, los edificios ya están construidos.
But in Hong Kong, the buildings are already built.
Es muy difícil cambiar todo eso ahora.
It's very hard to change all that now.
The urban redesign problem is one of those things that's easy to say in a conference room and almost impossible to execute at scale.
You can't retrofit the skyline.
Lo que sí puedes hacer es proteger a las personas más vulnerables ahora.
What you can do is protect the most vulnerable people now.
Centros de refrigeración, visitas a personas mayores, información sobre los síntomas del golpe de calor.
Cooling centers, check-ins on elderly people, information about the symptoms of heat stroke.
Eso es barato y funciona.
That's cheap and it works.
Pero necesitas organización.
But you need organization.
Hong Kong actually does have cooling centers, public spaces like libraries and community halls that stay open longer during heat events.
The question is always whether the people who need them most actually use them.
Es un problema cultural también.
It's a cultural problem too.
Muchas personas mayores no quieren ir a un lugar público.
Many elderly people don't want to go to a public place.
Prefieren estar en casa.
They prefer to be at home.
Y los trabajadores de construcción, por ejemplo, no pueden ir a un centro de refrigeración porque tienen que trabajar.
And construction workers, for example, can't go to a cooling center because they have to work.
The construction workers issue is enormous across Southeast Asia.
A lot of those jobs are done by migrant workers from lower-income countries.
They're outdoors, often in direct sun, often without adequate water or rest breaks.
Heat illness in that population gets dramatically underreported.
En Qatar, durante la construcción de los estadios para el Mundial de 2022, murieron miles de trabajadores migrantes.
In Qatar, during the construction of the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup, thousands of migrant workers died.
El calor fue uno de los factores más importantes.
The heat was one of the most important factors.
Fue un escándalo enorme, pero en muchos países de Asia, las protecciones para los trabajadores todavía son muy débiles.
It was a huge scandal, but in many Asian countries, protections for workers are still very weak.
And what strikes me about Hong Kong specifically is that it's one of the wealthiest cities in Asia.
If Hong Kong is struggling with the health infrastructure to handle 36.9 degrees, what's happening in cities with a fraction of those resources.
Es una pregunta muy importante.
That's a very important question.
Manila, Jakarta, Dhaka, estas ciudades también son muy densas y también tienen veranos muy calurosos.
Manila, Jakarta, Dhaka, these cities are also very dense and also have very hot summers.
Y tienen muchas menos posibilidades de proteger a su población.
And they have far fewer resources to protect their populations.
El calor extremo es un problema global, pero las consecuencias no son iguales para todos.
Extreme heat is a global problem, but the consequences are not equal for everyone.
Climate change as inequality amplifier.
The people who contributed least to the problem are the most exposed to its consequences.
That is not a new observation, but Hong Kong hitting a 142-year temperature record makes it very concrete.
Y las predicciones para Hong Kong son preocupantes.
And the predictions for Hong Kong are worrying.
Los científicos dicen que para el año 2050, los días de calor extremo van a ser dos o tres veces más frecuentes.
Scientists say that by 2050, extreme heat days will be two or three times more frequent.
Un récord de hoy puede ser un día normal en veinte años.
A record from today could be a normal day in twenty years.
A record from today, a normal day in twenty years.
The whole meaning of the word 'record' changes when the baseline keeps shifting.
You're not measuring against nature anymore, you're measuring against a nature that we've already altered.
Oye, antes de terminar, quiero hablar un momento de algo que dije antes: 'golpe de calor'.
Hey, before we finish, I want to talk for a moment about something I said earlier: 'golpe de calor'.
En inglés es 'heat stroke', ¿verdad?
In English it's 'heat stroke', right?
Pero en español, 'golpe' normalmente significa un impacto físico, como cuando alguien te da un golpe.
But in Spanish, 'golpe' usually means a physical impact, like when someone hits you.
Es curioso que usamos la misma imagen en los dos idiomas.
It's interesting that we use the same image in both languages.
You're right, I hadn't thought about that.
Heat stroke, golpe de calor.
Both languages reach for the same metaphor, the idea of the heat hitting you like a blow.
As if the weather is attacking you.
Which, at 36.9 degrees with ninety percent humidity, it really does feel that way.
Sí.
Yes.
Y 'golpe' en español tiene muchos usos.
And 'golpe' in Spanish has many uses.
'Golpe de estado' es un golpe político.
'Golpe de estado' is a political coup.
'De golpe' significa 'de repente', como 'suddenly' en inglés.
'De golpe' means 'suddenly'.
'Golpe de suerte' es un momento de suerte.
'Golpe de suerte' is a stroke of luck.
La idea siempre es algo que llega rápido y con fuerza.
The idea is always something that arrives quickly and with force.
Stroke of luck, heat stroke, coup d'état.
The word 'stroke' does the same work in English.
A stroke of genius, a brush stroke, a medical stroke.
All of them carry that sense of something sudden and decisive.
Languages keep independently inventing the same violence.
Me gusta eso.
I like that.
'Los idiomas inventan la misma violencia.' Puedo usar eso en mi columna.
'Languages keep inventing the same violence.' I can use that in my column.
Pero no voy a decir de dónde viene la idea.
I'm not going to say where the idea came from, though.
First time in eight years you've credited me with something useful and you're already planning to steal it.
Very on-brand, Octavio.
Very on-brand.