Weather Tidbits: Why The Body Sweats

This edition of Weather Tidbits will discuss why we sweat. Sweating activates through our sweat glands. It is a mechanism the body uses to cool down and regulate body temperature. Our body likes to keep our internal temperature at 98.6 degrees. If the body senses that the outside temperature is hot enough to raise the internal temperature, sweat releases from the skin. The cooling effect from sweat occurs when the sweat evaporates. Evaporation requires heat energy from the environment to transition a liquid to a gas. Thus, the surrounding environment drops in temperature during the process. The body is then allowed to cool down. Evaporative cooling from sweat is harder to achieve on muggy days. This is because the high moisture content in the air prevents efficient evaporation of sweat. When the air is dry, sweat is able to evaporate and cool the body down.