When a heat wave hits area, they will be there
Virginia colleges join together for mapping projects this summer
On the hottest day of the year, likely sometime in mid-July, most Hampton Roads residents will want to stay indoors in air-conditioned comfort.
But a few dozen volunteers, including Virginia Wesleyan University students in Virginia Beach, will move toward the most sweltering spots.
They’re part of a groundbreaking statewide study, conducted by colleges and universities throughout Virginia, that aims to record high temperatures across 10 Virginia cities to learn more about the impact of extreme heat in our communities. It’s an issue that’s gaining more attention alongside other effects of climate change.
“What’s really exciting is (we) are basically doing the largest scale heat-mapping campaign in the history of our country, this summer,” said Jeremy Hoffman, chief scientist at the Science Museum of Virginia. He will help lead the project. It can “provide one of the most detailed looks at how temperature varies (within communities) that has really ever
been generated,” he said.
The study was organized by the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges, which arranges collaboration and funding among 15 schools, including Virginia Wesleyan.
Matthew Shank, the foundation’s president, said faculty from the colleges had been looking for a research project that could involve undergraduate students across the state, and decided on heat mapping, which could get community residents to participate as well as having policy implications.
They brought in Hoffman, who has been studying what are known as “urban heat islands,” or areas in a city with temperatures much warmer than others nearby, in Virginia for years.
The museum in Richmond has spearheaded research that shows how communities of color are disproportionately impacted by extreme heat, work that has been highlighted in national news outlets, including the New York Times and CNN.
Hoffman said he hopes the heat mapping project will move people “from awareness of climate stressors to actually taking action on it.”
Datasets focused on a specific community are useful for spurring action from local officials, he added.
The best heat data that scientists currently have comes from sensors set up by the National Weather Service at specific locations, such as the Norfolk International Airport, Hoffman said.
That allows for good long-term analysis, but temperatures can vary within a few city blocks, he said. They need more detailed information to make local decisions.
That’s where the new Virginia college project comes in.
The data will “give us a really important snapshot about what our city does when it has a fever,” Hoffman said. “It tells us a lot about underlying stressors that may lead to heat-related illness and provide insight into what to do next.”
Organizers are working with members of the weather service to pick a date that will be one of the year’s hottest, likely in mid-July. On that date, students and community volunteers will fan out across each of the 10 cities — including Virginia Beach — as well as Richmond, Petersburg, Lynchburg and Arlington.
Using sophisticated thermometers and humidity sensors attached to a car window, they will drive along predetermined routes at three different times in the day to capture the data.
Elizabeth Malcolm, a professor of oceanic and atmospheric sciences at Virginia Wesleyan who’s coordinating that school’s effort, said the team is working to identify specific regions of Virginia Beach to measure — the Alanton neighborhood and nearby Hilltop, for example.
“The Hilltop area has a low tree cover, whereas you go north to Alanton and it’s some of the best in the city,” Malcolm said. “We’re expecting to see a big difference in those areas.”
The commercial Northampton Boulevard area, close to Virginia Wesleyan’s campus, is another planned route. A few public schools, such as Diamond Springs
Elementary, also have asked to be included in order to assess whether tree planting efforts have helped with temperatures, she added.
Once the data is collected, Malcolm said it will be incorporated into various college classes and research projects. They also plan to share it with the city’s urban forestry program, so officials can identify places to expand tree cover.
Trees that provide shade aren’t the only way to mitigate rising heat from climate change. Hoffman believes heat should be a factor in the very way cities are built.
Communities that house people of color and those who have lower incomes tend to face higher temperatures, sometimes 15 or 16 degrees higher than neighboring, wealthier areas, research by Hoffman and others have found.
A heat mapping project in Norfolk a few years ago found similar disparities between some areas, Hoffman said. That project also found that hotter areas of the city had poorer air quality.
The urban heat island effect can be linked to city planning decisions made decades ago, he said. Redlining — the practice of informally segregating neighborhoods by race in the 1930s and 40s by discouraging investment in Black communities — has left a mark in those communities.
White, wealthier areas are home to more trees and green spaces that provide shade and help cool the air.
Historically Black neighborhoods have more dark surfaces, such as asphalt parking lots, that absorb more of the sun’s energy and re-emit it into the air as heat, Hoffman said.
Lighter colors reflect more of the sun’s energy back toward space, he said. A cost-effective “climate hack” that can help in hotter areas is simply changing the paint color or roof material of a building.
Going from a black tar roof to a white plastic one can reduce indoor temperatures by several degrees, which has an added energy savings benefit, Hoffman noted.
As our cities grow, he said we can design them to better protect citizens — particularly those who work outdoors or take public transit — by including more green space and positioning buildings in a way that shades major thoroughfares.
In the short term, data about hotspots can also help inform local leaders where cooling centers or shade structures might be most needed on hot days, for example.
Hoffman said he’s glad to see heat mapping gain traction — President Joe Biden’s recently unveiled budget includes a line item for such work.
Sea level rise and flooding are the climate stressors top of mind in Hampton Roads, Malcolm said.
“But heat is also one that gets overlooked. It doesn’t seem as dramatic as a hurricane,” she said.
“But if you think of all the people impacted by heat waves every year — kids doing sports outside, people who work outside, the homeless population — it’s a lot of vulnerable people.”