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Heat, humidity during India's monsoon may extend summer heat stress: Study

Hot and humid conditions prevailing during India's monsoon season could extend the duration of uncompensable heat stress of the summer season under a global warming of 2 degrees Celsius, a study has found. Findings published in the journal American Geophysical Union (AGU) Advances highlight a "surge of UHS (uncompensable heat stress) during the monsoon season (July-October) as the climate warms". Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar and the US' Stanford and Purdue universities said long-lasting uncompensable heat stress across both the seasons -- summer and monsoon -- could pose critical challenges to public health, labour productivity, and climate resilience in densely populated and vulnerable regions. Uncompensable heat stress occurs when one's body is unable to cool down through sweating or other mechanisms due to extreme heat and humidity. A sustained accumulation of heat can endanger human health, including causing heat-related illness, organ .