‘Heat Hub’ tracking extreme temperatures to learn how to adapt

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — July set a new record for being the hottest month in California’s recorded history, with an average temperature of 81.7 degrees.

Given back to back extreme heat waves over the years, experts are joining forces at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to help humans adapt to changes in the weather.

Scientists in five theme areas — atmospheric dynamics, ecohydrology, public health, education and community engagement — are working together to form a unified research center, called the Heat Hub .

With the hub, they want to better understand how extreme heat happens, how it impacts human health and how we can adapt to it in such a varied region.

“Across that whole range of geographic variability, socioeconomic variability, vegetation variability, we see many different realizations of heat, many different types of impacts,” said Morgan Levy, a Heat Hub assistant professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“We look at temperature anomalies, right? So how different the temperature is from normal and you can get huge anomalies here where, you know, a hot day here we’re really not used to,” said Rachel Clemesha, an atmospheric dynamics project scientist with the Heat Hub.

Clemesha studies the relationship of the marine layer with water and land temperatures.

“What we talk about with heat waves is the flavor of heat waves,” she said. “If you have a long stretch with both hot days and also hot evenings that can add up and be more detrimental.”

“We’re kind of built out to rely on natural air conditioning, but as that changes or, you know, in different heat waves, that kind of natural air conditioning turns off so that the shading of the low level clouds doesn’t protect you any more, then it can be really extreme off the coast,” Clemesha continued.

To monitor heat events, the program is installing 20 weather stations including one at the World Beat Center in Balboa Park and at schools in communities dealing with excessive heat and limited STEM programs.

Nan Renner’s job is then to bring the climate conversation to the classroom.

“[The students] discover that there are some parts of our city, some parts of our county that are hotter than others, but one of the explanations in urban areas is that the way that we have built the environment with pavement, asphalt, buildings or lack of vegetation creates a heat island effect where those surfaces absorb solar radiation and re-radiate that heat,” said Renner, the co-principal investigator for K-12 education.  “Equity is at the center of all of what we do in terms of education, community engagement and the societal benefit of the science that we’re doing at the Heat Hub.”

All of this data is shared with the team of heat hub professionals.

“We can compare the map of greenness to the map of the land. Surface temperatures and areas that are greener tend to have lower temperatures,” said Levy, who focuses on landscaping solutions, pointing out how plants can provide coolness.

“When we look at plant greenness, some of the areas that are the most green and have the highest reductions in corresponding temperature are our managed lands. Those are parks, golf courses and agriculture,” Levy continued.

Plants cool us down not only with shade but also by breathing water in our air.

“You put a plant on a piece of land. That plant causes the air temperatures to decrease by a certain amount,” Levy explained. “One of the scientific things we’re interested in is if the plant is water stressed, are we getting less heat reduction?”

Keeping cool and keeping up with climate change is the goal here, but to beat the heat, we have to be on the same team.

“So engaging people of all ages, students, their teachers, their families, their communities is a way that we build understanding so that we can protect ourselves, each other and our ecosystem and create a community of climate resilience because we can protect ourselves from extreme heat,” Renner said.

The SoCal Heat Hub program is grant funded for the next three years by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

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