S1: Welcome in San Diego , it's Jade Hyndman. What's the one thing that comes to mind when you think of extreme weather risks ? Heat is often overlooked , and yet many San Diegans are vulnerable to its deadly impact. We'll talk about ways to reduce the risk. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. We all know San Diego for its good weather , but the risk of extreme heat is actually growing across the city , and not all neighborhoods are experiencing it the same way. In fact , extreme heat is the most widespread climate risk in the city of San Diego. That's according to a December report from the Brookings Institution , which looked at heat , wildfire and flood risk data. I'm here now with Jenny Schuetz. She's a senior fellow with Brookings Metro and one of the authors of that report. Jenny , welcome.
S2: Good to be with you.
S1: I'm so glad you're here.
S2: So you are blessed or cursed with having lots of different kinds of climate risk. You have heat , you have wildfire , you have flood. And so that makes it a great place to look at the different kind of spatial patterns and compare across those categories of risk. And then second , San Diego is actually in a really good position from a public sector standpoint to do the preparations and planning and investments to take care of climate risk. You know , we work all over the country and we find that , for instance , in many parts of in parts of the South , a lot of elected officials don't want to talk about climate. And that makes it very hard to do planning. You have a really high capacity city. The mayor and the council and the county supervisors are on board. With this being a problem. It's a high resource city , which means that you already have people in place and are thinking about ways to do this. So the city itself is very receptive to recommendations and was willing to work with us as a partner.
S1:
S2: Some climate advocates call it a less visible or a silent risk , partly because it's just not as big and dramatic and sudden. So when wildfires happen or intense storms , it's very visible. It's very tangible. You can see it heat. You don't see , you just feel it. And so we pay less attention to it. One of the other things that I particularly picked up on because I primarily work in housing markets , is that property insurance markets are forcing a lot of conversations and some action around wildfire and flood. Those are climate events that damage buildings that are very , very expensive. And so the property insurance market has really kicked into high gear. Property insurance is not going to force us to take action on heat , because heat primarily harms people rather than buildings. So we're going to have to find other levers to make people focus on this and think about the consequences.
S1: Well , and like we we've discussed , you know , this report maps out the climate risk across San Diego. I want to start with City Heights , which you specifically looked at for heat. What did you find there ? Yeah.
S2: So we wanted to understand kind of the big city wide spatial patterns. And of course , one of the things that you notice very quickly about San Diego is that areas that are closer to the coast or cooler and heat risk rises as you move inland. So just there's going to be more physical risk and exposure as you move closer into the inland areas. But we also wanted to overlay that with characteristics of neighborhoods that make them more vulnerable in some ways. So it's not just whether there is heat risk in your community , it's how well prepared the people who live there and work there are to deal with that. So we wanted to look at , for instance , City Heights , because it's an area that has below average incomes and has a lot of older buildings , a lot of rental housing. Those are people and buildings that are going to be more vulnerable. A lot of the older buildings there don't have air conditioning , and people also don't have the income to pay for really high electrical bills. If they were to install air conditioning , they probably couldn't afford to run it. So that's a community where you sort of overlay the physical risk with the demographics and identified as that is an area where the public sector is really going to need to concentrate some resources to make sure that people are going to be protected.
S1:
S2: That was one of the things we learned from mapping risk , that it's not that sort of large areas have the same heat and the same temperatures. It actually varies quite a lot. And some of that you can , you can understand is related to the built environment. So if you are close to a park that has grass and trees or water feature , you have those sort of natural cooling influences. You know , the more concrete and asphalt we have , the hotter the temperatures are , the less it cools down even overnight. So you can see some of these differences across the neighborhood , exposure to physical features that will change the temperature even within some relatively small spaces.
S1: You mentioned air conditioning and maybe some people not being able to afford something like that break down cooling costs for us.
S2: The First Street Foundation puts this together to provide kind of consistent estimates of risk and some of the financial costs across neighborhoods and cities , but they have to make a lot of assumptions to figure out what it would cost for people to pay for air conditioning. So , for instance , they are making an assumption that all of the buildings have air conditioning installed , which we know is not the case. They have to make some estimates about the cost of electricity that's looking at kind of averages. And for instance , a lot of the buildings that are larger buildings , the cooling cost for the overall building is huge. But we don't know , for instance , whether it is an apartment building that's divided up and each apartment individually pays for this and is separately metered. So the cooling cost variable is sort of it's a number that gives you a sense of kind of how expensive it would be , but it doesn't really correspond to what an individual renter or owner or business owner would actually be paying.
S1: And we've touched on this also. But not all households experience heat in the same way , which leads to concerns about equity.
S2: And heat is one of those , uh , risks that affects people differently based on both their income , but also in things like age and health status. So we know , for instance , that older adults are much more vulnerable to health problems that are related to heat. And so that's a community that we're really going to be worried about and want to identify where there are concentrations of older adults. And you might need to have more services provided. But income matters a lot to richer households are more likely to own their own home , which means that they have control over the physical environment. If they want to install air conditioning , they can do that. Renter households often don't control the amenities in their in their home or building lower income households. Also just they're stretched to pay the rent. As it is , utilities are often a significant amount of their monthly costs , and if they have to pay to run air conditioning to stay cooler , many of them are not going to be able to afford it , and they're going to choose only to run it very sparingly , if at all. So we know that low income households are just going to need more assistance in order to stay protected when he actually comes.
S1:
S2: And , you know , one of the things we wanted to do was demonstrate how they can use this kind of data to plan , but that's really just the first step. There going to be a variety of community level interventions , things like increasing the tree canopy , providing shade features at transit stops that local governments actually can do themselves. So that's great. And , you know , your city and your transit agency and your school district are very aware of this as a risk and are thinking about what they can do. But this is also an area where we really need to have better communication with the broad public and with community groups and intermediaries. We haven't done a great job at explaining to people when heat is dangerous , what the physical signs are that people should worry about. It's not just that you are hot , it's that people's , you know , people's organs start failing. They start having really serious medical problems. And most people don't actually know that. If you don't live in a in a really hot climate. Also , understanding the kinds of resources that are available , not just for the local government , but there are some federal resources available to help pay for electricity bills or pay for retrofits of low income apartment buildings. So local governments really have an important role to play in this communication sharing information with people , sharing access to resources and helping coordinate across the different kinds of government agencies. So it's not just the city , it's not just the city and the county. Your transit agency , your school districts , all of them need to be involved. And , you know , somebody essentially has to step up and say , I'm willing to be the quarterback and bring together all of the constituents , bring together business groups so that we can make the right investments. Wow.
S1:
S2: So when we walked around City Heights , for instance , we got to see that the transit stations have shade features , right ? That's a neighborhood where a lot of people rely on the bus to get around. And so the bus station that's right off of the freeway has really well designed shade features , so that people who are there have a bench to sit on and are not directly in the sun. Um , you know , the city has also put a lot of thought into things like how do you provide cooling centers ? So we learned from talking to them that when they first opened cooling centers as an overnight place for people to stay when it gets really hot , that a lot of older adults were reluctant to come in and use it because they had pets at home and they didn't want to leave their pets in a hot house and abandoned them. So then you have to think about , can you design a cooling center that allows people to bring their pets with them so that you're able to. Them adequately. Um , you know , the city is also working with groups like scripts to understand things like when they put in tree canopy. Are they putting in the right kind of trees ? Are they setting aside money for maintenance ? So you don't just plant the trees , you have to water them in order to keep them alive. So those are the kinds of sort of multi-layered decisions and actions that the city really needs to go through. Working with intermediaries helps a lot. No one agency is going to be able to do all of the work themselves.
S1: Well , in. You actually met with city officials to talk about your findings.
S2: Um , they were excited to hear the recommendations. They were interested in seeing some of these maps and thinking about how they can use the maps as communication tools. Right. That's one of the things that's really important. If you want to build support among your voters who may need to pay higher taxes or maybe make investments in their homes , you have to show them why this is important. And so the data that we're using allows you to develop these graphics to then do outreach. Um , they're also the city is doing a number of listening sessions with community groups in all of the council districts , so people can come together and say , here are the problems that we're dealing with and what's working and not working. That kind of gathering information from constituents and then using those meetings as an opportunity to share out the city's plans are also really helpful. Building understanding , building buy in is going to be really important. A lot of the investments in buildings are going to be done by individual building owners. It's a very decentralized ownership structure. Um , and so you really need to develop these strong ties between not just the city , but things like the Chamber of Commerce or local business improvement districts who can help reach individual property owners.
S1:
S2: Uh , first of all , it's inefficient if they're all going through the exercise individually. And also a lot of communities just don't have the staff , the knowledge , the resources to do this. You know , we chose to work with the city of San Diego because they are big and well staffed and well resourced and have very competent staff working there. But we talked to some of the smaller suburban communities around San Diego , and they have maybe one person working in the planning department. They have no capacity to do this. So we recommended that Sandag step into the role of doing the data analysis , the mapping , and a lot of the coordination. You know , Sandag can't do the investments , but they can do a lot of the back end research , and they're in a great position to pull together local governments from across the region , also thinking about communities sharing their plans with their neighbors. Uh , it's a little bit less the case for heat than it is for fire and flood. But you want to make sure that the flood protections don't stop at the city boundaries , because the flood isn't going to stop at the city boundaries. So , you know , getting sharing resources to have access to this data , doing collective planning , in some cases doing collective grant applications. You know , there's a lot of federal money at the moment available for local governments to do climate related work , and you're in a much stronger place to apply for that money for either state or federal grants. If communities are working together and are going to integrate their investments.
S1:
S2: Uh , you know , the city and the region are already working together on things like transit plans. It's often hard to get some of the smaller communities involved , either because they just don't have staff who can join , you know , monthly meetings and be involved with that. Um , and some of the wealthier communities don't necessarily want to partner with the larger region. Uh , they tend to think that they can resolve issues on their own. So I don't know what the plans are likely to be , but given that the entire region is going to face some level of risk , the more local governments can coordinate with their neighbors and not try to go it alone , the better off everyone will be.
S1:
S2: A lot of our responses to natural disasters tend to be reactive. We wait until after there's a major heat wave and power goes out and people are left without cooling. To think about what you do , planning in advance and having , uh , you know , having essentially sort of an emergency plan in. Readiness really helps , particularly for things like stresses on the grid , right ? Our response to heat is often just crank up the AC. What happens if there is a rolling brownout ? What happens if the grid is overloaded or there , you know , there's a fire and so you're not able to use your AC ? Are there plans to get at least vulnerable people into some place that's cooler and have backup generators ? It's not the kind of thing that you want to be developing on the fly.
S1: Yeah , all things to certainly consider from both the public and policymakers. I've been speaking with Jenny Schuetz , senior fellow at Brookings Metro. Jenny , thank you very much.
S2: Thank you.
S1: Coming up , we continue the conversation with a look at what heat actually does to the body.
S3: It is really like a silent and sneaky killer that will impact individuals that are already very , very vulnerable and isolated. And it will kill a lot of people very silently.
S1: More on that when we return. You're listening to KPBS Midday Edition. Welcome back. You're listening to KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. We've been talking about extreme heat in San Diego , and now we want to dig into the science behind it. A local research hub is digging into the impacts of extreme heat in coastal southern California. Two of its researchers joined me now. They're with the SoCal Heat Hub , which is based out of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Alexander Sasha Gershon is a research meteorologist. Sasha , welcome.
S4: Good to be with you , Jade.
S1: Also with us is Tariq Bin Manea. He's an associate professor of epidemiology. Tariq , welcome to you.
S3: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
S1: All right. Well , so glad to have you both here. First , what kind of research do you lead at the SoCal heat Hub ? Sasha , I'll start with you. Jay.
S4: Jay. The. We contribute climate information , so climate research. I'm a meteorologist and a statistician , which makes me a climatologist. Climate being the statistics of weather. And in my group was study extreme weather events and how they're related to climate variability and climate change , and how to use those relationships to predict and understand things better , especially impactful extreme events. So we contribute information on extreme weather , in this case , heat waves , uh , their flavors , their behavior. Basically , we work with the other contributors , the other scientists in the heat hub. Tarik is one of them. And together we address impacts of the extreme events that we study on health.
S1: Tariq , what do you do you have anything to add to that ? Yeah.
S3: Of course. So in this project , like in a second axis that they lead , we mostly focus on trying to understand not only to which extent health impacts are related to different types of extreme heat events and the different types of flavors of extreme heat. As as Sasha Alexander just presented. But we're also trying to understand , like how the impacts are distributed over space across neighborhoods , trying to emphasize the environmental justice implications of extreme heat in San Diego and in Southern California more generally. And , of course , try to understand why is that happening ? Is it because some communities are living in more neighborhoods with more bakery talent ? Is it because of the pre-existing , uh , comorbidities and conditions that may make some communities more susceptible ? So this is more or less what we're trying to understand the impacts , the inequalities of these impacts.
S1:
S5:
S4: In , uh , California we have three types of heat waves. As far as I'm concerned. We have , uh , summertime dry heat waves and summertime humid heat waves. And we also have very coastal heat waves that are caused by Santa Ana winds and they occur in the fall , winter and spring. And the summertime. Heat waves are typically associated with , uh , high pressure over the area. The humid heat waves have more of a air advection from the ocean , which is the reason that they're humid.
S1: Put it into perspective for me. I mean , we're talking about extreme heat and humidity. How how high of a temperature are we talking about here ? When we say extreme heat.
S4: Uh , heat waves occur everywhere. And basically , uh , heat waves are extreme temperatures relative to what's normal for a particular place. So it's really important to look at anomalies or temperature relative to what the climate typically is to what to what the temperatures are like normally during a particular season. And , and um , that's why it's not necessarily very useful to look at absolute temperatures because , for example , you know , what is the normal day out in the desert in August is going to be an unprecedented heat wave at the coast , uh , here at the coast of Southern California , where we have natural air conditioning by proximity to the cool ocean and the marine low level clouds that cool off the immediate coastal zone during the warm part of the year , even though it doesn't get nearly as hot as it is over the desert , it is much , much hotter compared to what is normal for , you know , in terms of average summertime temperatures. And so there's just not enough acclimation to heat at the coast , neither physiologically nor technologically , for example. We don't really have a lot of air conditioning. Uh , along the coast , most homes are not air conditioned. Certainly mine isn't. And neither is my office. And so , you know , when it gets hot , it doesn't take as much heat , uh , at the coast to send people to the hospital.
S1:
S3: And this number also is very important to kind of decomposing to direct and indirect impact , because when you look at what the CDC reports every year , the numbers are more or less between 6 and 700. That only includes the direct , uh , deaths that are directly attributable to extreme heat. But this is to understand the real impact of extreme heat will also need to decompose and understand , like how heat is going to accelerate and complicate existing chronic diseases and its condition and eventually lead to collateral mortality. And this is how we come up with this , um , with these specific huge numbers. And when we compare extreme heat to hurricanes , wildfire , etc. and the reason for which it's like that is really about what it does to our body and , and also how our body responds to extreme heat , because the main response we have to kind of deal with heat when our body starts to kind of warm up , is really what we call thermal regulate , which is trying to evacuate as much water as possible outside the body to to cool down through evapotranspiration. And that can be effective , uh , eventually. But the way to do that is really to kind of , uh , send a lot of blood in a kind of circulatory system. And you can , first of all , think about the implication for people that have existing cardiovascular issues. And it may lead to a lot of cardiovascular complications. So people that have , for example , existing , uh , health diseases , it can be quite it can be quite fatal if the cardiovascular systems start to be overwhelmed. On top of that , because you evacuate a lot of water where it started with a lot of the rotation issue. And that can also lead to just like many complications on vital organs like kidneys , for example. And people that have metabolic issues , like people living with diabetes are particularly at risk for these type of , uh , complications. And just also to connect with what Sasha just mentioned , because the main mechanism we have , like our body has to cool down , is by evapotranspiration when the outside environment is quite humid , includes a lot of humid like humidity. In terms of absolute humidity , this process is going to be not as effective as it cools. So humidity is a very big challenge in in in relation to how extreme heat can be dangerous. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Well here's a question for the both of you.
S3: Like I have many misconceptions. The first one I would say is about heat being like being only affecting people that are , for example , going for a hike in a hot afternoon and they don't think enough about drinking enough water. So something that is accident like accidental. So this is way more complicated than that. Heat is really like a silent and sneaky killer that will impact individuals that are already very , very vulnerable and isolated. And it will kill a lot of people very silently. So that's the first misconception , I think about heat. And this is why I think it didn't receive the attention it deserved in the last few decades. Uh , and now I think it's changing , but I think this is like the first misconception. The second misconception is really about what constituted a dangerous heat condition , because many people think that there is a kind of objective definition of what constitutes the extreme heat or heat wave. These concepts are very volatile , and you really need to think about how extreme heat and different communities are going to get. Different individuals within a community are going to be very differently susceptible and impacted by different types of extreme heat conditions. And that is very , very important to consider. This huge heterogeneity is primordial to understand when we are shaping , uh , adaptation policies. So that would be the two misconceptions that I would like to emphasize. And also in San Diego. And I think that's also to relate to what Sasha mentioned before. Heat is also not only a summer problem. Of course , there are a lot of summer heat issues , obviously , but because of this downslope wind , including Santa Ana winds , we we have this off season of summer extreme heat events. And I think they they are very , very specific. And there are a lot of misconceptions about the reality of this , uh , offseason. Keith Evans.
S1:
S3: Well , I think so. There's a lot of things that are already taking place , but I think there are different levels of actions. First of all , to try to reinforce and make sure that the existing actions are effective and are doing what they supposed to do , which is reducing , just making sure that people are safe during extreme heat. And so I think there is a lot of , uh , effectiveness evaluation that needs to be done , but and also try to make sure that the local actions in specific communities , like what type of cooling centers are accessible to Egyptians , are tailored to the populations that are particularly vulnerable in each community. And then there is also a lot of long term actions that need to be done in terms of how the urban landscape need to be reorganized to try to reduce vehicle retirements , and that it's a very long term agenda. And that is very , very important to consider and how we can optimize that. So I think that is because we can't green all sandigo everywhere in the same way. So we have to prioritize that and optimize that. And I think taking into consideration the specific reliability of communities to try to reduce microgrid violence in communities among communities that would that would benefit the most for this type of intervention , I think , would be definitively a good idea given the big inequality associated with extreme heat.
S4: I think to to add on to what Tariq was saying about intervention strategies , one important issue is that because heat waves are becoming more expressed in nighttime temperatures , uh , and that's really a double whammy for health impacts , as Derek was saying , because not only is it more difficult to cool ourselves off by sweating when there's more moisture in the atmosphere , and so basically , sweating tends to rather than evaporating and cool our skin tends to just make us sweat , but not , uh , not any cooler. And then we don't get that respite from humid heat during warmer nights. One issue for intervention strategies is that right now , they're designed for daytime expressions of heat waves. You know , uh , how do we address the fact that people are going to need more cooling at night when , uh , currently cooling centers are not working , and that and there's no real way by taking public transport to get there at night , even if they were. Uh , so this is something that needs to be addressed. Another thing is that we know that heat kills people disproportionately in low income neighborhoods , and even people who have functioning air conditioning. Uh , have died from the heat and did not turn on their air conditioning and had died from the heat. So one issue that really needs to be considered , uh , somehow modulating the price for energy during these high demand periods of heat , especially humid nighttime heat.
S3: And if I can just add something about what ? Just like a kind of takeaway message for individuals , for people to come back is really to do not and , uh , estimate the kind of how heat can be can be problematic. And also to check in with like the most vulnerable kind of relatives because this is really like a kind of , uh , social isolation issue as well. And when we analyze data about who , like , which individuals are dying because of extreme heat , it's very often some elderly individuals are living by themselves , by and , you know , total isolation. And , and they're just like , uh , and they keep being exposed to the high temperature. They eventually die from it. So checking in for individuals and also making sure that your specific and specific component of activities in cooling centers are taking place , and also the subsidizing , uh , electrical like electricity during this , this , uh , like the summer is , is something that has been experienced in some in some regions in the US but also in Canada. And that's definitely something that is very , very important. And this kind of energy justice component is critical in relation to extreme heat and what we can do about it.
S1: I've been speaking with Alexander Sasha Gershon of research meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Sasha. Thank you.
S4: Glad to be with you. Thank you. Jade , thanks for your interest. Yes.
S1: Yes. Also , Tariq bin Mana , associate professor of epidemiology. Tariq. Thank you.
S3: Thank you so much.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
