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Image Source: Climate Central
The United States had the hottest summer ever recorded in 2024, with some cities experiencing 100-plus-degree temperatures for multiple consecutive weeks. The scorching weather has led to thousands of heat-related illnesses and deaths, disrupted transportation infrastructure, damaged crops, and compromised the country’s overall quality of life.
Moreover, many U.S. cities experience the “heat island effect,” in which heat reflects off hard surfaces, like pavement and rooftops, intensifying the impact of the hottest days. This leads to worsening air quality and greater health risks, especially in historically marginalized communities.
As temperatures continue to rise and the effects of global warming intensify in the summer months, we take a look at the tools and strategies some cities are using to cool down and protect their most vulnerable citizens.
Extreme heat is the deadliest weather-related hazard in the U.S., according to Climate Central, which studies the changing climate and how it affects people’s lives. The nonprofit indicates that about 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in metropolitan areas where urban heat islands can reach peak temperatures up to 20 degrees hotter than nearby areas with more trees and less pavement.
Peter Girard, vice president of external communications for Climate Central, pointed to several cities employing innovative initiatives to combat heat. The Los Angeles Urban Cooling Collaborative (LAUCC), for example, is a multidisciplinary partnership of universities, climate researchers, nonprofit organizations, community groups, and government agencies working together to cool urban areas in the region.
The Los Angeles-based nonprofit Climate Resolve is a partner in the LAUCC. Enrique Huerta, Climate Resolve’s legislative director, said the organization focuses on the communities “hit first and worst” by extreme heat.
One “Cool Community” project is underway in Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley, one of the hottest areas of Los Angeles. Climate Resolve and several other organizations partnered with GAF, a roofing and waterproofing manufacturer. The company coated about 18 square blocks, including streets, a school playground, and a recreation center parking lot, with a water-based epoxy that blocks the pavement from absorbing much of the sun’s radiation, thus reducing surface temperature.
Huerta said special sensors showed the coating lowered the daytime ambient temperature in the area by about five degrees. Based on the success of that program, future phases may include the installation of solar shingles on Pacoima-area homes and businesses, as well as cool roofs, which are designed to reflect more sunlight and absorb less solar energy.
Climate Central is also working with philanthropic organizations to offer a free grant writing program for any community or city that needs help capturing funds to adapt to extreme weather. Huerta said that over the past four years, they’ve garnered over $250 million in grant money for local cities.
Climate Central also successfully advocated for California’s 2023 adoption of an indoor heat protection regulation that requires employers to adopt safety measures to prevent the risk of heat illness to workers, mostly in settings like restaurants, warehouses, and manufacturing facilities. Some of the requirements include providing water, rest, cool-down areas, and training.
Image Source: City of Boston Office of Climate Resilience
In looking at the big picture, Huerta with Climate Resolve said implementing effective strategies to combat excessive heat remains a challenge. The country was late in recognizing the serious threats posed by global warming, and there’s a constant need for new solutions.
“Things are changing every year, so community solutions that might have felt appropriate five years ago are no longer effective moving forward,” he said. “There is a need to accelerate the number of cooling solutions, but we can’t just put them out there before testing them and making sure that they’re effective, science-based strategies. That’s going to take time.”
As temperatures continue to rise around the globe, Tucson is one of the fastest-warming cities in the country. In 2024, the city had 112 days of temperatures above 100 degrees.
Fatima Luna, Tucson’s chief resilience officer, said that in 2023 the city adopted a climate action plan known as Tucson Resilient Together. The plan is intended to provide a strategic pathway to reduce the city’s emissions to net zero by 2030, identify the communities most vulnerable to climate change, and provide strategies to help Tucson adapt to extreme weather, including excessive heat.
As part of this plan, Luna said the city hosted a summit in early 2024 to create a heat action roadmap, laying out goals and strategies.
Simple strategies include distributing heat relief bags with items like hydration packs, hats, and sunscreen to underserved communities. More ambitious plans include the Storm to Shade program, in which special landscaping and physical structures are installed on public property to capture, clean, and infiltrate stormwater.
“For neighborhoods with less tree canopy, this diverts and purifies water from the streets and helps us create green spaces where they’re needed the most,” Luna said. “It also helps shade and cool nearby surfaces and buildings.”
Another way Tucson is creating green spaces is through its Million Trees Initiative, which aims to plant one million trees by 2030 to increase the city’s canopy and help mitigate the effects of climate change.
Luna said Tucson has planted over 120,000 trees. To increase capacity, the city created a tree center to implement a municipal nursery and increase the number of trees in public spaces. Last year, Tucson received a $5 million grant from the USDA to bolster the initiative, with funds earmarked to support tree green infrastructure projects, including a youth workforce development program.
“The grant is not only an investment in planting trees for the next four to five years, but it also creates the urban forestry workforce that is needed,” Luna said.
Moreover, in the summer of 2024, Tucson secured a $3.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to help communities create climate-resilient building codes and address issues such as extreme heat, drought, and water supply challenges.
“The idea is that we create the codes for new buildings that are very specific to our desert environment,” Luna said.
Image Source: City of Boston Office of Climate Resilience
Boston’s newly formed Office of Climate Resilience manages the city’s response efforts to climate challenges, such as coastal flooding, extreme heat, and stormwater flooding. Many of the organization’s solutions focus on redlined areas of the city, which have comparatively little parkland and tree canopy and can be 7.5 degrees hotter in the day compared to other parts of Boston.
Matthew Kearney, the city’s deputy chief of emergency management, said strategies include expanding free-to-access cooling locations, investing in cool and green roofs, adding green space into street improvement projects, enlarging the network of community parks, and creating cooler commutes through shaded bus stops, cool pathways, and other mobility improvements.
He said the city often works with community organizations to educate people, especially vulnerable populations, about how they can protect themselves and their neighbors, adding that it’s critical the city meet people where they are and empower local organizations connected to neighborhoods.
“It’s unrealistic for us to set up more cooling centers and ask for folks to come to government buildings to access them,” he said. “We need to go where the residents are and make sure resources like misting tents and cooling towers are available.”
Zoe Davis, senior climate resilience project manager, said that in addition to educating residents, the city’s communication efforts are also critical.
“We’re trying to build a culture of preparedness, similar to how we have robust cultural preparedness around wintertime,” she said. “We all know when it’s time to get out the winter coat and boots and change to snow tires. We need to have that same sense of preparedness before summer starts.”
Davis added that an important tool in the city’s toolbox is its work with organizations like the Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD), a nonprofit that helps those in need. The nonprofit administers the Income Eligible program of the Mass Save program, which provides no-cost energy efficiency upgrades to eligible homeowners.
“We talk a lot about outdoor cooling and tree canopies, but indoor cooling is just as important, especially for vulnerable folks who are maybe having trouble paying for a utility bill or need help accessing an energy-efficient appliance.”
Kearney added that as climate change brings more storms and extreme weather, multiple emergencies can happen simultaneously, which requires a coordinated response.
“It takes additional resources to put out a multiple-alarm fire when it’s been 100-plus degrees for multiple days, including how to safely shelter displaced residents,” he said. “This is where partnerships are really important. Rather than operate in silos, we have to pool our resources and work together, and that includes at the local, state, and federal level.”
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