There are more than five weeks left until the official start of summer, but preparations for extreme heat have been ongoing for many months in parts of the country hit hard by last year’s sweltering conditions.
“We are preparing for year-round heat in Phoenix,” the mayor said Kate Gallego he said. “It’s something we know is coming, so we have to think about it even on the coldest day of the year.”
But last summer was especially severe — Phoenix, for example, endured 31 consecutive days of high temperatures at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit, the city breaking a previous record of 18 days set in 1974. At least 645 people in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, died of heat-related causes in 2023an increase of 52% compared to the previous year, according to the municipal Health Department.
The heatwaves of 2023 revealed how challenging it can be to deal with extreme temperatures for weeks on end, even in places where residents are accustomed to hot weather. And the coming months are expected to be just as hot – if not hotter.
That’s led cities across the South and Southwest to reevaluate how best to keep people safe — and alive — this summer. Some have launched new initiatives aimed at increasing shade in public spaces, strengthening health systems to deal with heatwave victims, and raising awareness among outdoor workers, the homeless, and other vulnerable communities.
Gallego said Phoenix has been creating “cool corridors” by planting trees and covering pavement with more reflective coatings to reduce urban heat. The main focus now is to mitigate high temperatures at nightthat devastated the city last summer.
“We were getting low temperatures that were setting records for how hot they were,” she said. “This really leads us to focus on how we design the city – what materials we use and how we protect open spaces, which tend to dissipate heat at night.”
In Miami-Dade County, Florida, director of heating Jane Gilbert said a top priority is channeling resources to protect residents most vulnerable to temperature spikes.
“They are people who cannot keep calm at home in an accessible way, they are people who have to work outside the home, they are the elderly, they are people who have to take a bus on a route where they may have to wait at a stop without shelter for more than an hour. in that heat,” she said.
To that end, the county Department of Transportation installed 150 new bus shelters last year and is expected to add 150 more this year, according to Gilbert. With a $10 million grant from the Reducing Inflation Act, the office is also planting trees along county and state-maintained roads to increase shade.
Gilbert’s team focused on raising awareness among renters and homeowners about affordable ways to cool their spaces. Her office also tries to educate employers about the importance of protecting their workers and organizes training programs for health care professionals, homeless outreach workers and summer camp providers.
Nationally, heat kills more people than any other extreme weather event; It is often referred to as a “silent killer” because the impact of heat on the human body is not always obvious.
“When a hurricane or wildfire hits, there’s no doubt about what happened, but the heat is harder because most of the time we don’t have those same context clues in our environment until it becomes so extreme,” he said. Ashley Ward, director of the Center for Heat Policy Innovation at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability.
Ward and his colleagues specialize in “heat governance,” helping local and state governments prepare for extreme heat events. The work includes finding ways to mitigate heat and developing emergency responses to large heat waves.
In North Carolina, for example, Ward and his colleagues helped counties develop heat action plans to identify their most vulnerable populations.
She said government authorities should treat bouts of high heat and humidity similar to hurricanes, tornadoes and other disasters.
“People who work in emergency management and public health already have a lot of structures in place for all kinds of other extreme weather events, but not so much for heat,” Ward said.
Last summer was a wake-up call, she added.
“That was our Category 5 heat event,” Ward said. “The extreme nature of what we saw last summer was enough to draw attention to this issue.”
Climate change is increasing the frequency, duration and intensity of heat waves around the world, studies show. Last year was the year of the planet hottest ever recorded, and the warming trend continues. April was the 11th consecutive month with record global temperaturesaccording to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
In much of the US, temperatures over the next three months are expected to be above average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Ward said it’s encouraging to see cities taking extreme heat seriously, but emphasized that big challenges lie ahead. On the one hand, early preparation for extreme heat requires financing, which is a major challenge, especially for rural communities.
Even more complicated will be addressing the underlying social issues that are magnified during heat waves, such as homelessness, rising energy costs and economic inequality.
Ward is optimistic, however, that last summer’s experience has catalyzed some local governments to act.
“What I hope we see in the future is more emphasis on what we can do to reduce these exposures,” she said, “so that we’re not constantly in response mode.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
