Learning Heat Resilience During Extreme Temperatures

The dog days of summer are upon us. But it seems this year that summer heat has more of a bite. Extreme temperatures are changing everything from work, sleep, sports, and summer camps.

There are ways communities can deal with extreme heat, but it takes a systemic approach. In this hour of All Sides, learn about heat resilience and what it takes to build heat-resilient communities.

Plus, what does heat do to the body – how it affects the young, the old, and the in between. And what about those who work under the hot summer sun or in sweltering factories, are there legal workplace protections?

Guests:

• Ladd Keith, director of the Heat Resilience Initiative at the University of Arizona
• Dr. Stephen Auciello, program director at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program
• Richard Bales, professor of law at Ohio Northern University

Transcript

This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.

Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. The dog days of summer are upon us, but it seems this year the summer heat has had more of a bite. Extreme temperatures are changing everything from work to sleep to sports to summer camps. There are ways communities can deal with extreme heat, but it takes a systemic approach. What is heat resilience and what does it take to build heat resilient communities? Joining us now is Ladd Keith, director of the Heat Resilience Initiative at the University of Arizona. His research focuses on heat planning, policy, and governance to help increase the heat resilience of communities, regions, and nations across the world. Thank you for joining us today, Ladd.

Ladd Keith: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.

Juravich: So, tell me, what is extreme heat? How hot does it have to get to use the word extreme, I guess?

Keith: That's a perfect way to start off this episode, right? Extreme heat really varies across the world. And so I think depending on kind of your geographic location, your cultural norms, heat can mean a lot of different things to a lot different people in a lot of different places, right. So there's no one correct answer. I would say extreme heat probably should be best defined as heat that's above what's normal for your area at that time of year and causes impacts that are out of the norm.

Juravich: Okay, so above normal, impacts that are out of the norm. How has extreme heat in the US been different than what we're hearing about in Paris, for example? So I read very recently that France recorded maybe 5,700 more deaths than usual due to the historic heat wave they had in France in June. That seems very extreme to me, is it?

Keith: Yeah, that's a great question. I would say the underlying factors are actually exactly the same, no matter where you are in the world right now. Extreme heat is being fueled by human-caused climate change, which are causing kind of average temperatures to rise gradually over the years. But those gradual rises that might be a little bit harder for people to notice on a day-to-day basis lead to these extreme kind of tails of heat waves that we're seeing. And so, science has shown that heat waves are increasing in intensity, but they're longer in duration. They're happening longer outside of their seasons now too, and so kind of the same physics apply whether you're in Ohio or France, right? The heat waves that we're seeing are becoming more of your across the world.

Juravich: But six straight days of 90 plus temperatures in Paris and six straight days of ninety plus temperatures and Arizona probably are two different things you you're used to it right is that what is that the biggest difference is that in France they're not used to.

Keith: Yeah, that's a good question. So I would say we do see a little bit of difference in the world between historically hot places and historically cooler places, right? And so places like Arizona have been historically hot and we have some adaptations built into what we work on, but we're seeing our temperatures rise too. And even just this year had a historic early heat wave that was in March and it was our earliest 100 degree temperature ever, which caught us a little off guard with kind of our preparations for protecting people. And so even in Arizona, where it's been historically hot, we're certainly being impacted by heat. How you address the heat certainly changes depending on whether you're a historically hot place or a cooler place. And so one of the things that Europe has been kind of grappling with is they do have a well-known kind of aversion to air conditioning. So part of it's just the building stock and the historically cooler temperatures that they have had in a lot of places like France. But that, and that differs from the United States where we obviously have the world's highest prevalence of indoor air conditioning, right? So those adaptations that we have built into our cities and our built environments are certainly changing how we're feeling the heat as it continues to rise. And so I think the main message there is that across the world, our cities have been built for a climate that no longer exists and places are kind of grappling with how to adapt very quickly to the heat that they're experiencing now due to climate change.

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