January had the highest low ever recorded in the month in SP – 02/14/2024 – Daily Life

The official temperature measured by Inmet (National Institute of Meteorology) remained above 25.9°C in São Paulo on January 17th. The agency had never recorded such a high minimum in the first month of the year since it began collecting data at Mirante de Santana, a reference meteorological station in the city, in 1961.

The brand reinforces the common feeling that it is also hot at night. January is a hot month, at the height of summer, but the variation in weather over the days usually includes milder temperatures, especially between sunset and dawn. Nighttime relief, however, is becoming less and less.

The average minimum temperature in the first month of the year in São Paulo has risen from 18°C ​​to 20°C since the 1960s, shows an analysis of Sheet based on historical data from Inmet. The number recorded in 2024 is not a record, but it follows the general warming trend in the city, the country and across the globe.

Also on the 17th, Inmet recorded the hottest dawn in the history of the capital of São Paulo for January (29°C), considering measurements taken daily at midnight at Santana station. The average temperature observed at this time also increased by two degrees, from 20°C to 22°C, compared to the beginning of the series with official data.

Minimum temperatures are associated with the so-called thermal adaptation opportunity. Experts point out that, as they usually occur in the early hours of the morning, there is not much that can be done in abnormal heat episodes, given that parks or air-conditioned establishments are closed, for example. In other words, during the day, it is easier to adapt.

Nighttime heat and ways to alleviate it are topics of study in the area of ​​urbanism, but the issue has been almost neglected in São Paulo in recent years, in the view of Denise Duarte, an engineer and professor at USP who researches the adaptation of cities to climate change.

“Cities that have climate adaptation plans in place leave parks open later or even at night, so there is a refuge,” he says. But this is not the only alternative – and it would be a challenge to public safety. According to her, many modern commercial and residential buildings go against sustainability and climate change.

“During the heat waves observed last semester, we had several blackouts in the Faria Lima region, either due to transmission failures or overload. What do you do in this situation? The buildings are evacuated or a diesel generator is used, burning fossil fuel. The math doesn’t add up.”

In cases like this, with completely glazed buildings and without a nighttime external ventilation system, offices and homes are 100% dependent on air conditioning.

Living all the time under the effect of an artificial refrigeration system is not beneficial to your health, as the human body must have a certain flexibility to thermal, humidity and light fluctuations. On the other hand, living in excessive heat for nights in a row is also bad for your health as it affects your sleep, which creates various complications.

From an architectural point of view, experts suggest points such as night-operable windows, light colors and controlled translucent elements. Regarding urban planning, it is necessary to adapt the density to allow ventilation between buildings and create wooded areas, especially close to places already saturated with buildings.

This new level of warm temperatures at night is also one of the reflections of El Niño, highlights meteorologist Marília Nascimento, from Inpe (National Institute for Space Research). The expert reinforces, however, that severe occurrences are increasingly common, and the tendency is for the heat to continue to increase even after the phenomenon cools down.

“The fact is that, in this context of climate change, extreme events such as droughts, heavy rains and heat waves are becoming much more frequent and more intense. This is already an observed fact, it is not nonsense”, he states.

Report from Sheet showed that the world has experienced five El Niños more severe than the current one in the last 70 years and this was not enough for temperatures in Brazil to present anomalies like they are now.

In stronger El Niños, the average temperature in the country increased by 0.14°C, considering the period from June to September. In the same period of 2023, when the water in the Pacific registered a rise of 1.2°C, the temperature in the country rose 0.8°C, that is, 5.7 times more.

Another recent analysis by WWA (World Weather Attribution), a group of scientists that studies climate events, showed that the heat waves last semester would not have occurred so strongly – the average temperature increased by more than 3°C in some cities – no was global warming. Without human action, the record heat experienced in the Brazilian winter would be 1.4°C to 4.3°C lower.