Denver's urban heat island effect makes it even hotter than you think

Temperatures topped 100 degrees over the weekend, but for much of Denver, it felt hotter.

State of play: The city's built environment — buildings, roads and sidewalks — make it feel 9 degrees warmer downtown, according to a new analysis from Climate Central , a research nonprofit.

• The average urban heat island effect is 7.84 degrees, and roughly 428,000 residents feel a temperature intensity of 8 degrees or more.

Why it matters: Denver is becoming hotter in the summer months because of climate change, and the city's built environment is only exacerbating the effects.

How it works: The urban heat island index looks at how hard, dark surfaces absorb and radiate heat in cities. The more dense the area, the greater the ripple effect because heat emissions come from transportation, building energy and industrial facilities, Climate Central explains.

• Urban buildings can add 20% more heat to the air, studies show.

The latest: This is no surprise to Lis Cohen, the city's climate adaptation and resiliency manager. Her team is hosting "heat summits" and plans to identify seven initiatives by the end of the month to address the city's rising temperatures.

• The options being discussed include accelerating the city's tree-planting goals, developing habitability standards to keep tenants of multifamily housing cool in the warm months and developing ways to shield travelers from the heat at bus stops.
• More urgently, the city's climate office is working to distribute air conditioners and purifiers to vulnerable populations and install electric heat pumps to limit carbon emissions.

What she's saying: "People aren't used to [this level of heat], so we've built our city for a climate that was in the past," she said in an interview.