How will Qatar's heat affect World Cup footballers?
Credit: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty
The first match of the men’s football World Cup kicks off in Qatar on 20 November, when the temperature will be around 30 °C and humidity will approach 60%. When Qatar first won the bid to host the tournament 12 years ago, extreme heat was one of several concerns; since then, the average annual temperature in the country has risen by around 1°C. Theis the first to be held in November, to avoid Qatar’s hot summer.
The most telling measure when it comes to heat and athletes' health is the wet-bulb globe temperature , which combines heat, humidity and other factors, including the angle of the Sun and wind speed. High humidity makes conditions feel hotter, and the human body’s cooling mechanism — sweating so that water evaporates off the skin — is much less efficient because there is so much water in the air. So playing sport in high WBGTs can cause the body’s core temperature to rise dangerously high.
Air-conditioned stadiums will reduce the heat exposure for players in the World Cup — but teams might still experience some heat stress.
Several stadiums have an open roof and so, especially during midday matches, the players could still be vulnerable to heat stress, says Thijs Eijsvogels, an exercise physiologist at Radboud university medical centre in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He adds that the training complexes at the World Cup are “just ordinary training fields, without any air-conditioning”.Players can prepare their bodies, if they have enough time.
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