Urban heat islands are places where the built environment - like buildings and roads - raises temperatures above surrounding undeveloped areas. A new analysis shows hundreds of thousands of residents of cities in the West - and millions nationwide - are enduring substantially elevated temps.
The group Climate Central looked at 44 US cities, and found that 41 million people live in places where temperatures are eight or more degrees higher. In Denver, it’s nearly half the population - roughly 870,000 people. A similar proportion was seen in Albuquerque, while it was about 40 percent in Las Vegas.
Data for all 44 cities is available for download here.
“We call heat a silent killer,” said Vivek Shandas, a Portland State University climate adaptation professor. “It's one of those natural hazards that affects people like outdoor day laborers, people living alone, often isolated in multifamily residential apartment buildings, people who are out on the farm … or in the field. And these deaths are very silent. They don't often make newspapers.”
He said when the day’s high is in the mid-70s or low-80s, an additional 8 degrees “may not be that big of a deal.”
But, as the Climate Central report notes, in the context of human-caused climate change and the rising temperatures it brings, “the built environment in cities amplifies both average temperatures and extreme heat.”
To prepare, Shandas said that communities ought to develop what he called a “systematic heat action plan,” including infrastructure and design changes that can lower temperatures.
“Every community needs to be thinking more seriously about how to coordinate across the multiple sectors, across multiple management agencies, the private, the public, the schools, the outdoor workers,” he said. “We need to come up with a comprehensive heat action plan that allows us to situate these different communities across the different contexts and the way that heat makes its way into everybody's lives.”
Also important is creating green spaces, which he called “nature’s air conditioning units,” as is building connections between neighbors through events like block parties.
“If we got more neighbors to talk to one another and understand and connect with one another, my deep, sincere belief is that we will be watching out for each other when these extreme events fall,” he said.
