HONG KONG — On a mid-September day, Wong Ping-kuong, 74, and his colleagues worked quickly to spray clean an outdoor staircase and elevator landing. It was only mid-morning, but already hot. The temperature later rose to 31°Celsius (87.8°Fahrenheit). Wong has felt the impact of climate change in the half-century that he has worked as a construction worker and later an outdoor cleaner. “It’s gotten hotter. Before, I didn’t sweat; now my back is often covered with sweat,” he told Mongabay. Wong and his colleagues consider themselves lucky. They say when temperatures are high, they can go inside their truck, turn on the AC, and cool down a little. However, heatstroke can occur quickly, setting in within 10-15 minutes. Outdoor workers like Wong are exposed to increasing risks of heat-stress-related health problems, such as dizziness, headache, nausea, heatstroke, or acutely worsening pre-existing chronic conditions such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Like many places around the world, Hong Kong is suffering from extreme temperatures. Official figures show it is warming by nearly half a degree Celsius per decade. The city also experiences longer and hotter summer months, with the number of “very hot days” quadrupling since the 2000s, data from the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) shows. On Aug. 9, HKO logged 36.9°C (98.4°F), the highest temperature at its main monitoring station since record-keeping began in 1884. In the outskirts of Hong Kong, the weather service measured even higher temperatures that day: 39.8°C (103.6°F) — another record. Unlike other developed economies, Hong Kong…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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