Sweltering weather has left swaths of the US baking. A ‘heat tsar’ could help, experts say
Record-breaking temperatures. Millions under heat alerts. Hikers dying on hot trails.
As large swaths of the US bake under sweltering heat, some advocates and officials say the Biden administration should consider appointing a “heat tsar” to manage a response.
The Earth saw its two hottest days in recorded history this week as parts of the south-west roasted, and as a stretch of the south endured a brutal heat dome that was parked over Texas for weeks.
Heat kills more Americans than any other form of extreme weather. The threat is increasing amid the climate crisis and will accelerate, especially if the world doesn’t urgently stop burning fossil fuels.
In response, Phoenix, Arizona; Los Angeles, California; and Miami-Dade county, Florida have all appointed chief heat officers – or “heat tsars” – over the past three years, as have at least six global cities.
“It’s been very valuable for us in the city to have a permanent office dedicated to heat,” Kate Gallego, the mayor of Phoenix, whose administration created the nation’s first-ever office of heat response and mitigation in 2021, helmed by chief heat officer David Hondula. “Before, it wasn’t always clear who was in charge.”
Rising temperatures have been brutal in Phoenix, the hottest city in America. Last year, Maricopa county reported 425 heat-associated deaths, a 25% increase from the previous year.
It’s a trend affecting regions across the US, leaving governments scrambling to prepare. A federal body could help them share best practices, said Gallego.
“We have probably 30 ideas about how to respond to heat,” she said. “If New Orleans already knows 25 of them but they benefit from five new ones, that could be incredible. It’s the same for mayors in Texas, who have lost too many lives already.”
Gallego says that such a federal body could be helpful for historically temperate regions like the Pacific north-west, where hundreds died in a record-breaking 2021 heat dome.
She recalled rare floods in Phoenix in 2014, her first year in office.
“We didn’t have huge expertise in responding to flooding, but the federal government does, and they were able to provide consulting through Fema that helped me understand where to get an emergency supply of sandbags, for instance, or what tools are available if your fire station gets flooded,” she said.
Traditionally hot regions also sorely need more federal support, said Jane Gilbert, who has served as Miami-Dade county’s first chief heat officer since May 2021. That support is needed with collecting data on deaths and injuries to capture the true toll of heat waves.
“Heat could be the cause of … cardiac arrest, of a worker falling off a ladder, a psychotic break in a homeless person, of kidney failure in an outdoor worker, but it’s not necessarily coded as heat-related, so we don’t have good data on emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and deaths,” she said, adding that federal officials could help compile research and convene experts to navigate the problem.
The Biden administration has taken steps to improve heat preparedness. Last summer, it unveiled Heat.gov, an interagency heat-focused website. The site, which tools such as heat index guides, a heat and health tracker, and a climate and health forecast, has improved communication between federal agencies and local officials, Gilbert said.
While the National Weather Service has traditionally based heat alerts on how often certain thresholds are crossed in certain areas, for instance, it is beginning to consider health impacts of heat, thanks to input from the CDC, she said. To kick off these efforts, it’s piloting a program this summer in Miami-Dade county that lowers heat alert thresholds. Heat advisories will be issued at 105F (40.5C) instead of the previous level of 108F, and excessive heat warnings will be issued at 110F (43C) instead of 113F (45C) – changes Gilbert said could help keep people safe.
But Juley Fulcher, health and safety advocate at consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen, said while Heat.gov has produced useful tools, it has not led to policy changes or increased material support.
“Interagency actions in Washington, have a history of not functioning as well as we might like them,” she said. “If there is that kind of concerted effort, there has to be some concerted funding put toward it [and] you can’t just take somebody who has a job that takes up 100% of their time and say, ‘here’s 20% more work to do.’”
A heat-focused office could see ongoing policies through to completion, she said. For years, Fulcher has pushed for a federal rule to protect workers from heat, which her organization found could save hundreds of lives each year. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration began creating the rules in 2021, but the process could take “a couple of years” to finish, she said. A heat office could ensure the rule’s completion is a priority, and could go even further to protect workers, distributing more educational materials to employers and conducting more research on risks.
Federal officials could help boost preparedness in other ways too, said Gallego, the Phoenix mayor. Currently, she is pressuring the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make heat eligible for the same relief available after other disasters like hurricanes – something a heat tsar could also see through.
Without those formal structures, said Gilbert, officials’ responses may be less sophisticated. Until her role was created, Miami-Dade’s response to extreme heat mirrored plans for extreme cold.
“With the unsheltered population, it was about getting people into shelters overnight when it’s coldest, but with heat, the biggest time of day that we need to worry about is from noon to 7pm,” she said. Now, responders are focused on getting people into daytime cooling centers, and are being trained to distribute cold packs and cooling towels.
In another example, Cecilia Sorensen, director of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University, said that amid the Pacific north-west’s unprecedentedly deadly 2021 heat dome, the region had no disaster protocol plan for heat.
“They activated their only disaster protocol, which was related to earthquakes,” she said. “That got all the right people on the phone to be able to coordinate, but that’s an example of … unpreparedness.”
Sorensen agreed that municipalities need help responding, but added that a new office or “tsar” might not be the answer.
“Each geographic area is is very unique,” she said. “And so much of the work to really prepare communities to be resilient involves engagement of community members and other stakeholders, and I don’t think the federal government can really convene at that level.”
Instead, she suggests that officials focus on boosting existing bodies that can support municipalities. In 2021, the Biden administration established the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity within the US Department of Health and Human Services. But a lack of congressional funding and authorization has left it without full-time staff or funding, she said.
“We should fund the office that’s supposed to be doing this work, rather than creating a whole new system in the executive branch,” she said.
But Gallego said heat is an urgent enough threat to warrant its own office.
“It’s time that the federal government had a new tool to address heat. Our entire planet is experiencing climate change and we need to adapt to that fact,” she said. “If the federal government created a one stop location for heat, they could save so many lives.”