“Feels like” Meteorological Parameters with Matlab

Dew point, heat index, humidex, wet-bulb temperature, wind chill and apparent temperature calculation.

The present submission is a set of Matlab functions that calculate some of the most widespread “feels like” meteorological parameters – dew point, heat index, humidex, wet-bulb temperature, wind chill and the Australian apparent temperature which reflect the combined influences of dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity and wind speed, providing a comprehensive understanding of how the weather will be perceived by individuals, particularly in terms of comfort and thermal sensation.

Three examples are given to clarify the usage of the functions. For convenience, the input and output arguments are given at the beginning of the functions.

The codes are based on the theory described in:

[1] Lawrence, M. The Relationship between Relative Humidity and the Dewpoint Temperature in Moist Air: A Simple Conversion and Applications. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 86, no. 2, pp. 225-234, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-86-2-225.

[2] Schoen C. A new empirical model of the temperature humidity index. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, vol. 44, pp. 1413-1420,2005. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAM2285.1.

[3] Anderson G., Bell M., Peng R. Methods to calculate the heat index as an exposure metric in environmental health research. Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 121, pp. 1111-1119, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1206273.

[4] Government of Canada. Glossary - Climate - Environment and Climate Change Canada. https://climate.weather.gc.ca/glossary_e.html#h.

[5] Stull, R. Wet-Bulb Temperature from Relative Humidity and Air Temperature. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 2267-2269, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-11-0143.1

[6] Osczevski R., Bluestein M. The New Wind Chill Equivalent Temperature Chart. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 86, no. 10, pp. 1453-1458, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-86-10-1453.

[7] Steadman, R. Norms of apparent temperature in Australia. Australian Meteorological Magazine, vol. 43, pp. 1-16, 1994.