Poor Neighborhoods Feel Brunt Of Rising Heat. Cities Are Mapping Them To Bring Relief

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Frances Acuña drives through southeast Austin with a sensor attached to her driver’s side door. It’s part of a federal study to measure rising urban heat.





Gabriel C. Pérez/KUT News



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Gabriel C. Pérez/KUT News



Heat and Health in American Cities
As Rising Heat Bakes U.S. Cities, The Poor Often Feel It Most

It’s a Hispanic and working-class part of town, known locally for the damaging floods that tore through in 2013 and 2015. (A study published last year found that, nationwide, poor Americans are also more likely to live in flood-prone areas.)

Frances Acuña, a longtime resident and community organizer focused on public health, says she’s noticed Dove Springs is getting hotter. Records back that up. In the last couple of decades long stretches of triple digit days have become common, and nights aren’t cooling down like they used to.

«I was noticing yesterday as soon as I got out, it was like the heat was penetrating into my skin, Acuña said on a recent August morning.

A big contributor is climate change. But in cities, asphalt and concrete are making it worse. They absorb heat, then radiate it back into the air, in what’s called the urban heat island effect. Even within cities it can change the temperature by ten to fifteen degrees in a matter of blocks.

It is often lower income parts of town, like Dove Springs, that are the hottest. In fact, a national study this year linked hotter temperatures to areas subjected to discriminatory, race-based housing practices nearly a century ago.

These are also the places where people have fewer resources to combat heat-related illness. So, for Acuña, it’s an environmental justice issue.

«We have more asthma cases, we have more respiratory infections, she says. «I believe all this has to do with the heat.

That’s why she’s one of twelve Austin volunteers who agreed to attach a specialized sensor to the side of her car, and drive through a neighborhood to create highly detailed heat maps.

Measuring the «true impact of heat

The sensors «stick out like… snorkels, says Marc Coudert of Austin’s Office of Sustainability. He’s helping organize the project, which is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Cities normally use satellite data to create heat maps. But that measures only surface temperature, so places like mall parking lots and airports show up hottest.

«We don’t want to use that as a mechanism to invest in Austin to reduce heat, says Coudert. «Because there are very few people who live at the airport, there are very few people to none who live in malls.

Instead, volunteers mount sensors on their car or bicycle and head out on specially designed routes, morning, noon and evening on a single day. They capture both temperature and humidity, which are then used to calculate the heat index that people actually experience where they live, work and play.

«The routes are very specific and very confusing, Coudert says. He shows off a map marked with squiggly lines.





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Volunteer Frances Acuña practices attaching a specialized sensor to her car door. It will measure both temperature and humidity.





Michael Minasi/KUT News



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Michael Minasi/KUT News





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This heat map of Washington, D.C., used data collected by community science volunteers on Aug. 28, 2018. The temperature across neighborhoods ranged from 85 degrees Fahrenheit to 102.





Map produced by Vivek Shandas and Jeremy Hoffman/NOAA Climate.gov



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Map produced by Vivek Shandas and Jeremy Hoffman/NOAA Climate.gov




This heat map of Washington, D.C., used data collected by community science volunteers on Aug. 28, 2018. The temperature across neighborhoods ranged from 85 degrees Fahrenheit to 102.


Map produced by Vivek Shandas and Jeremy Hoffman/NOAA Climate.gov

«We don’t really understand fully everything there is to know about urban heat islands yet, says Hunter Jones, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Jones says researchers will use the maps to learn how urban heat interacts with climate change, and what strategies work best to combat it.

«It would be interesting to go back and look at some a few years later to see how things have changed, both intentionally and unintentionally, to see how things have developed, he says.

In Austin, Frances Acuña says there’s no time to lose for her community. «If we don’t do something about the heat now, it’s gonna get a lot worse.