Question: why should a diver wear wet clothes before diving in cold water

Alice Kamau answered on 24 May 2018:

Water conducts heat away from the body about twenty times faster than air does. Any water cooler than the body temperature has the potential to eventually chill a diver, or even induce hypothermia. A wetsuits traps a thin layer of water against a diver’s body. While the diver still gets wet, his body rapidly heats up the thin layer of water trapped against his body to nearly body temperature. If the suit fits properly, the warm layer of water will not circulate away from the diver’s body. The wetsuits provide a certain degree of warmth underwater for divers because of it’s insulating properties of the rubber/bubble combination therefore reducing heat loss from the water in the wetsuit and therefore the diver’s body.