For Norway's national men's soccer team, Saturday's World Cup quarter-final against England will be a first in more ways than one. As the Scandinavian side prepares for the biggest match of its history, it will also face conditions almost unimaginable back home: the punishing combination of South Florida heat, humidity, and blazing sunshine that scientists warn can push the human body to its limits. South Florida's mix of strong sun, hot-air temperature, and high humidity'boosted by a plume of dusty air from the Sahara desert sweeping across the Atlantic through the state'will put the northern European players under a level of heat stress rarely experienced in their native countries. Scientists quantify this heat stress by calculating the wet-bulb globe temperature. On top of air temperature, the index takes into account humidity, which limits evaporation of sweat from the skin; wind, which can act as a coolant; and solar intensity, as sunshine directly raises individuals' skin and...
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