Estimation of Uncertainty in Wet Bulb Globe Temperature Measurements

Abstract

The Wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) index is a widely used tool for estimating human heat stress. It is calculated from three measured parameters: air temperature, natural wet bulb temperature and globe temperature. Very few papers have been published on the measurement uncertainty of this index. The uncertainty estimation has to account for correlations between the input quantities i.e. the three temperatures comprising the index. In the present short paper, three example measurements, under different conditions, were made to illustrate the calculation of the expanded uncertainty of the WBGT index. The analysis presented here complements the earlier work published in the International Journal of Thermophysics (Ekici in Int J Thermophys 38:85, 2017) and refers to the same type of measurement instruments.