She might call the science familiar.
When summer sun bares down on Delaware, trekking across parking lot asphalt feels much different than weaving through trees and park pathways. Sitting on a bench angled in shade from a nearby building, the researcher described, differs from a return to sun-washed sidewalks.
“Most of us have experienced at least that difference,” Dana Veron said simply. “We know that hardened surfaces tend to warm up more rapidly during the day, especially if they’re dark.”
What may be less considered, from block-to-block in the state’s largest city, is just who carries the brunt of heat’s unequal burden.
“We know there are a lot of areas, especially in our city, where we tend to have more hardened surfaces and less tree coverage,” continued the professor and co-director of the Gerald Mangone Climate Change Science and Policy Hub at the University of Delaware.
“We can get some very, very hot areas.”
One project hopes to better understand where that is.
Wilmington is one of 18 communities in 14 states selected by the National Atmospheric Administration to carry out heat mapping this summer. With Veron and other colleagues at the helm, local partners are now preparing for a “Heat Watch” project to better identify the city’s hottest areas — or urban heat islands — to further inform policy and research. Heat has remained the top weather-related cause of death in the U.S. for the last three decades.
Many residents, while miles away from any real coastline, are stranded on urban heat islands.
Neighborhoods like these — with little shade, large expanses of concrete and buildings, few trees and fewer parks — find heat enhanced in the day’s hottest hours. Perhaps more insidious, the same surfaces will release heat slowly over the course of the night. This is the urban heat island effect.
And summer heat affects economically disadvantaged communities and people of color on a greater scale, as statistics and research on this effect can trace as far back as racist housing practices like local developer “covenants” or “redlining” practices that blocked investment. Wilmington would offer no exception, already 60% impervious surfaces according to a recent city climate study.
Veron is much more interested in what comes next.
“We expect to see areas light up, if you will, on this heat map that are significantly hotter than areas maybe just a block away,” she said. “And those are areas that decisionmakers can target for cooling strategies.”
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Tools to combat increasing temperatures and safeguard health abound, said the researcher, from tree planting or new cooling centers, to living roofs, reflective surfaces and new pavement coatings.
“Our poorer neighborhoods, our more crowded neighborhoods that maybe already have economic challenges, they may have additional health challenges, they may have problems with transportation — those parts of our city are where we anticipate are likely to be experiencing the most extreme heat,” Veron said. “And also are the places that may need the most help.”
Researchers hope to show decisionmakers in the city, county and state which communities to target.
And, as it turns out, they could use your help.
One very, very hot day
The climate scientist planted at UD for nearly 20 years would love to just install a sensor on every corner. In an ideal world, she’d happily leave them and let them run for a decade of Wilmington summers.
This heat assessment starts and ends over about 18 hours.
“It is a big responsibility, so that makes me a little bit nervous, especially knowing the variability of our summer weather,” Veron said. “But I trust the design of the study.”
NOAA’s urban heat island mapping campaigns gather volunteers in each city to travel through their neighborhoods in the morning, afternoon and evening on one of the hottest days of the year, according to the administration, with heat sensors mounted on their own cars or bikes. The sensors record temperature, humidity, time and the volunteers’ location every second.
This Delaware team has already identified two possible timeframes within the second and third weekends of July, while it continues to work with the National Weather Service to narrow that down.
These researchers must also develop specific routes through over 50 square miles of study area. Then volunteers will mount temperature sensors on the passenger side of their cars before driving the same route during each measurement window.
The UD Climate Change Hub — partnering with DNREC, the Center for Environmental Monitoring & Analysis, community organizations and more — hopes to gain interest and volunteers from individual neighborhoods to assist in the study. Anyone curious is encouraged to fill out an interest form for more information. Volunteers and drivers will receive training before observation day.
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And at 11 a.m. this Friday, June 2, a virtual town hall is planned to share more on the plans ahead.
“It’s very nice to be able to get out into our communities and have community members participate in the gathering of the data — but I’m very excited about the next step,” Veron added. “And I think it’s going to take a lot of partners identifying: What’s the way they can best help?”
Have a story to tell? Delaware Online/The News Journal is placing a special emphasis on reporting about heat impact this summer, as part of an ongoing Perilous Course project across USA TODAY Network Northeast examining the human-centered damage and risks driven by the climate crisis. Reach out: kepowers@gannett.com.
But why?
These urban areas can get up to 20 degrees hotter than greener suburbs.
This exacerbates on more humid days, with a higher likelihood of hazardous heat. A difference of a few degrees of extreme heat can affect the body’s ability to regulate, and extended exposure compounds stress on organs. Those with respiratory illnesses, diabetes and obesity maintain the highest risk.
Heat claims more lives than flooding and hurricanes combined.
Conditions now, as well as a more extreme future, will likely demand physical adaptation, according to a national report on hazardous heat, as well as planning for emergency heat events, checking on residents, creating more cooling centers and ensuring people can reach them.
Portland, Oregon, combined its heat mapping data with demographics and air quality data to better understand these risks on vulnerable communities. This was used to inform heat mitigation strategies, according to UD’s Climate Change Hub, like cooling centers, drinking water distribution hubs, and tree plantings.
In Richmond, Virginia, it would further inform a long-range city planning strategy. Philadelphia just finished mapping last summer.
University of Delaware researchers plan to pair it with several separate sensors installed around Wilmington this summer, as well as more studies seeking data on human health in the heat.
More:What are the hottest days ever-recorded in Delaware? National Weather Service data answers
The city already identified greenery as a long-term solution to combat urban heat island effect in a study with DNREC — hoping to incentivize tree planting and “green roof” installation by streamlining approval processes and continuing to allot federal grant funds to plant trees in low-income neighborhoods.
Another city program also allows older adults to request free fans in the worst of summer heat. Several spray parks join a list of public pools and informal cooling centers, like the William “Hicks” Anderson Community Center in West Center City.
But use can be limited by access, lack of availability or unwillingness of vulnerable populations to use certain centers. Experts caution more will be needed.
“We want to know where to target first,” Veron said. “Which communities are going to need the most help?”
Have a story to tell? Delaware Online/The News Journal is placing a special emphasis on reporting about heat impact this summer, as part of an ongoing Perilous Course project across USA TODAY Network Northeast examining the human-centered damage and risks driven by the climate crisis.
Contact this reporter at kepowers@gannett.com or (231) 622-2191, and follow her on Twitter @kpowers01.
