Does anyone know why 25 degrees centigrade is hotter in the UK than the same temperature in Nigeria?

Question

Also my sister got sunburned in Houston Texas ( she's black by the way) plus she's lived in Nigeria, a very hot country all her life, sometimes the temperature gets up to about 40 degrees and neither she nor anybody else I know has ever gotten sunburned. Any ideas people?

Answer 1

25 C is the same anywhere.

The likely difference is the amount of humidity. A simple way to consider humidity is as a sponge - air with low humidity is like a dry sponge, air with high humidity is like a very wet sponge. Your body cools itself by evaporating sweat - if you keep with the sponge analogy, the amount of sweat that can be absorbed by evaporation depends on how full the air already is. If humidity is low, sweat evaporates readily and so your body feels cooler. If humidity is high then your sweat does not evaporate so readily so your body feels warmer and you are sweatier.

As for Houston and getting sunburned - she may be indoors more in Houston than in Nigeria, so when she went out for too long her skin was not as pigmented as it used to be.

Answer 2

Offhand I can't think of a reason, other than because she may have felt cooler in Houston, she was out in the Sun longer than she normally was in Nigeria.  Getting sunburned is not a function of air temperature, but the result of too much exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.  For the other part of your question, 25 degrees C is 25 degrees C regardless of where it is measured.  It would feel warmer than that if the air was humid.

Answer 3

Well, first of all, what race she is shouldn't matter.  

Isn't Nigeria closer to the equator than Texas?  Does that mean it gets more sun?  Weird!  

Is there more humidity in the UK?  That could make it seem hotter.

Answer 4

because nigerias proximity to the equator and humidity

Answer 5

It's very humid here in the UK... which makes the air feel sticky and unpleasant. That makes it feel like it's hotter. And I didn't know black people could get sunburned! I learned something new today :)