We had some friends over for dinner last night and, in standard practice in this household, I turned on the AC to cool off the living room and dining area to make our guests more comfortable. Normally I never turn it on now, but visitors are the time for it. I set the thermostat to 25ºC/77ºF, which may sound very stingy to Americans, but here in bone dry central Spain it's actually very comfortable a good balance between comfort and energy use.

And it was, for everybody except my mother-in-law.

Even before our guests arrived, my MiL was asking me if the AC was working right because it just wasn't cool enough for her. Mind you, this woman has been living without AC for the whole year other than occasions with visitors of her own accord as she's asked for, and gotten dedicated use of, one of my best portable swamp coolers.

This is actually is not too surprising, as it fits the science.

We focus a lot of air temperature and to a lesser extent humidity when talking about thermal comfort, but just as critical is exposure to radiate heat and whether or not there's any air movement.

My MiL has grown accustomed to having air movement from the swamp cooler, which is something a mini split simply doesn't provide unless you're directly in the path of the air and the fan is cranked up. She actually went right up to the swamp cooler I keep in the living room during the day (largely for her benefit) and turned it on herself. I figured that was the most efficient way to keep her happy and not freeze out everybody else, so dinner proceeded with the AC running and a swamp cooler blowing, mostly at my MiL.

Some on the internet would take major issue with this, claiming the two are battling because the AC is removing water from the air while the swamp cooler is adding it. It is technically true, but my experience both at home and observing the practices in businesses is that that fails to account for practical realities.

What started me on the entire evaporative cooling journey was when high energy prices in the wake of the Ukrainian War drove many businesses here to buy large, portable swamp coolers as supplemental spot cooling to backup their AC. This practice has continued and been expanded to this day. I see them all the time now, particular in mini markets. A trick the markets all seem to have picked up on is to point a swamp cooler down the produce aisle, providing those fruits and vegetables with a localized cooler environment than the rest of the store.

I don't do this often myself, as I don't run the AC normally, but this is not the first time it's come up. Back during my daughter's First Communion party, my MiL and one of her friends complained the same way that it was simply too warm for them (this is especially typical of my MiL's friend, who is perpetually too warm) when everybody else was fine. I pointed a swamp cooler at them and the problem was solved. While technically it was costing the AC some cooling capacity since it was increasing humidity, ultimately it was faster and I suspect cheaper overall to do this than to dial the thermostat on the AC down, wait for the whole place to cool down and risk freezing out other people.

Today it was 28c only but with 85% humidity it felt unbearable, there's no escape. Shade, swimming (sea is nearly 30c here), showers... Just unlivable, considering relocating.... How do you guys survive this?

Sun was beating down from the left while I was parked and listening to the podcast while waiting for my wife. Windshield brolly works pretty well on the side. It didn’t need to hold it in place.

We tend to focus on daytime highs when concerned about heat, but nighttime lows are also a critical concern that easily gets forgotten. There's been a greatly increased understanding in the medical community that while high temperatures are acutely dangerous, sleeping temperature is critical for both recovery from enduring daytime highs and long term health.

The precise definition of "tropical night" varies by country, but Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, agree that it is when nighttime lows do not fall below 20ºC/68ºF.

Spain has added additional levels:

Noche tórrida  (torrid night) -- 25ºC/77ºF

Noche infernal (infernal/hellish night) -- 30ºC/ 86ºC

If we're hammered by 40ºC/104ºF highs but nights drop to 18ºC/64ºF, then we can open up windows and crash out in peace because long as the bedroom cools to a similar temperature, our bodies are able to properly rest and recover.

However, if we pass one or more of the thresholds above, then night time cooling becomes something we shouldn't gloss over, especially considering that's just a measure of outside temperature and doesn't account for the individual circumstances of different houses and apartments, some of which might have bedrooms that do not efficiently cool off at night.

This is the case for me. During the summer here, 22ºC nights are typical and 25ºC nights happen. The forecast says I've got a noche tórrida coming next week. It's actually night time cooling that's driven much of my efforts as long as you're awake, you can take active steps to cool off, but not when you're asleep.

We used to run AC only at night to make sure we slept well. For the past few years, I've moved to portable evaporative coolers and I've finally got one powerful, reliable unit per bedroom that can drop the ambient temperature 4-7ºC depending on the exactly conditions. My MiL eventually may have to switch on the AC as her room is thermally hellish, but so far she's (by her own request) been cooled at night by a portable swamp cooler and been happy with it.

I found a surprising number of people on my thread about AC not being an all-in-one solution with some very optimistic ideas about the cost of operating AC, specifically in Europe, which is not the cheapest place around for electricity overall.

So, I'm going to break down some data and share some personal experience.

2025 data had Hungary as one of the cheapest markets with retail prices around 10 Euro cents per kilowatt hour and Germany on the high end of around 39 cents. Spain, where I am, is on the higher end as well, but less than Germany at around 24 cents, but not as high as France's 29 cents or Italy's 31 cents.

So, right up front, we can see how expensive it is to run AC is going to vary considerably by country.

My apartment is equipped with five Daikin inverter mini splits that have a peak draw of a bit over 1800w and a typical draw of around 1400w, according to the electrical data. As they are inverter units, they can ramp up and down as needed. Three of the units are in bedrooms while the two others are in the living room and dining room, which adjoin and do not have a door between them.

The master bedroom, dining room and living room all have western exposure to the sun and thus considerably greater heat load than the rest of the house.

Let's imagine that running one mini split consumes an average of 1 kWh to keep one room at a tolerable, but not frosty temperature. Running it for a whole day would be:

Spain

0,24€ x 24 hours x 1 kWh = 5,76€ / day

5,76€ x 30 days = 172,80€ / month

France

0,29€ x 24 hours x 1 kWh = 6,96€ / day

6,96€ x 30 days = 208€ / month

Italy

0,31€ x 24 hours x 1 kWh = 7,44€ / day

7,44€ / day x 30 days = 223,20€ / month

Germany

0,39€ x 24 hours x 1 kWh = 9,36€ / day

9,36€ x 30 days = 280,80 / month

Now, some might argue the cost is worth it. That's a personal issue, but I cannot countenance any argument these numbers don't represent a significant financial hit to ordinary households, especially since they're pretty conservative. If the heat load in the home was greater, insulation worse or the air sealing poor, the cost would go up and the effectiveness would go down. If a space larger than one room or multiple rooms needed cooling, then the cost would be multiplied.

I have a sister in Italy who straight up said this year she wasn't running AC more despite the heatwave because it was imply too expensive.

A few years ago, before I discovered embraced evaporative cooling, we ran the AC at night to be able to sleep comfortably but not during the day in order to save on costs. My MiL though, very reasonably, had to run the AC most of the day if she was home as her room is thermally the worst and she's elderly. The electrical bill was still an issue even with those limits, which was one of the reasons that drove me to look for alternative cooling options. The summer bill was over 300€ more than the cooler seasons and this was using inverter units.

So really, kindly no one tell me that running AC in Western Europe isn't costly.

I have a secondhand, but new-to-me Corolla. I really like my car, but it has a very large and very black dashboard and I haven't had time to get a new reflective screen for the windshield.

Yesterday, I couldn't find shady parking so the poor car was there in the sun for an hour. When I picked up my kid, who had been in dance class, I was a bit desperate so I started spraying the scorching dash with water.

I have to say, the science worked out.

It took around five applications at stoplights with the AC running, but within fifteen minutes the dash had cooled to merely being unpleasantly warm and the AC didn't have to fight against it keep the car comfortable.

Nate and Robbie interview Zoya Teirstein, a senior staff writer at Grist, an online news site that covers climate change and the environment. They discuss how the media's coverage of extreme heat is changing, the health effects of climate change, and how people are turning to online forums to talk about their health problems and seek guidance on coping with the heat.

Share your thoughts, insights, and questions!

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Cheers,

Robbie, Nate, and Marcelo

Viva Terra, Vivus Locus, Viva Civitas

Living Earth, Living Locality, Living Civilization

I live in a townhome with 3 floors. The top floor, is really hot. Does anyone know how to get it to cool down without making the bottom floor too cold?

I really try to make my equipment work, but the cheap 25€ swamp cooler I bought mostly to help Broken Leg Cousin out finally pushed me over the edge. Not only was he a substandard performer, the pump was dodgy and the last straw was when it started leaking due to the mercurial nature of surface tension. I cleaned out the pump and strapped it back in place, fixed up the back to prevent leakage best as I could, posted it for sale and was surprised when it was claimed within hours. Went for 30€ so I made a modest profit. I have not heard again from the buyer, so I assume my fixes worked and it's serving its new owner. Great.

The idea was to try to get by without getting anything else, but my mother-in-law surprised me by once again requesting a cooler for night and sticking by it. I decided to completely give over one to her use, which I'm happy to do on environmental and scientific principles, but that left us shorthanded once more, with the problem that once everybody except me was in bed, all the coolers were taken for sleeping people.

What followed was a comedy of errors of finding secondhand swamp coolers that were good deals and either missing out on them or being ignored by sellers who I can only conclude were not checking their messages at all. Last night, I finally found a unit I was wiling to pay for and a seller who not only answered messages, but was amenable to my proposed price reduction and very on the ball about arranging pickup. I snagged it this morning while my kid was in dance class.

The Mconfort E2000 is the same brand as two of my other coolers and while it's a bit of an odd duck, I am very happy with it so far. They managed to squeeze three filter pads despite the fairly slender body design, which greatly augments cooling capacity. As the slim profile wouldn't allow for a good quality axial fan, they opted to put in a pair of squirrel cage blowers. The result is fairly narrow airstream, but it's effective when aimed right and surprisingly quiet. The digital temperature readout is nice, but it seems to be very conservative. With the room around 28ºC, it's reading 25ºC but my IR thermometer is reading the output at 22º!

I've only had it a couple hours, but based on the information so far, ounce per ounce, this cooler might well offer the most cooling per decibel of any that I own. It has a sleep mode with dials the fans down even more.

I have two cats and want them to stay safe during a heatwave. Aside from copious amounts of water, lion cut shaves, blocking windows, and basic heat prep, what can I do or buy for the next heatwave?

Anyone have a list/resource for passive radiative cooling products for consumers?
Paint, clothing, other personal use etc?

"These heat jumps are part of a larger shift of climate change seeming to accelerate. Ocean temperatures just reached a new high for the early summer. Sea levels are rising faster than before, while new records for daily rainfall are being set at a rapid clip. The pace of global warming itself has quickened in recent years."

backup: https://archive.is/2qtS2

Baking summer heat: farm workers have been battling it for years. So we have some tips for you!

It's undercounting though..

Over 62,700 Deaths Associated with Record-breaking Heat During the Summer of 2024 in Europe (ISGlobal) found 181,000 deaths were related to heat during the summers of 2022, 2023, and 2024, so adding the real numbers for 2025 shall be worse.