MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Under the heat dome that's cooking the eastern half of the country, humidity makes it feel even hotter. As Anastasia just mentioned, as hot as 115 degrees in some places. Scientists say climate change is making intense heat waves more frequent. So what makes this heat different, and how can people stay safe? Ashley Ward is with us now to talk about that. She's director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University. Welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.
ASHLEY WARD: Thanks so much for having me.
MARTIN: Now, you know, some people - when you think about extreme heat, you think about places like the Arizona Desert. But right now things are extreme in, like, Columbus, Ohio, in Atlanta, Georgia. Should more people in more places expect to get this hot?
WARD: Absolutely. I think we need to stop thinking about extreme heat as a problem only for the desert and Southwest. I mean, as this event shows us, people in the Midwest and the Southeast and the Northeast, they also are experiencing heat, but in addition to humidity, warmer nights, housing infrastructure that perhaps is not prepared. You know, lots of people don't have air conditioning.
And that can make heat dangerous well below temperatures that we might see in Phoenix. It doesn't have to be - I mean, you've been talking about some pretty extraordinary temperatures, but it can be dangerous even below those extraordinary temperatures.
MARTIN: Let me ask you about a couple of things you mentioned. First, humidity. Why does humidity make high temperatures particularly dangerous?
WARD: Humidity makes them dangerous because sweat is how we cool the body, and sweat only cools the body when it can evaporate. And when there's such a high moisture content in the air, when we have high humidity, there's nowhere for that sweat to go, so it sits on top of the skin instead of evaporating. And so the body will keep trying to work to cool itself, but to no end, right?
And so this can push people toward things like heat exhaustion or heatstroke, particularly if they're also doing work or exerting themselves, you know, if they're outside, an event, or if they have other kinds of vulnerabilities, like being pregnant or chronic illnesses or taking certain medications.
MARTIN: You know, on a hot day, a lot of people look forward to temperatures dropping at night, or in this case, like, for example, all the people working here right now, we come in before the sun comes up. But with this heat wave, it still feels really hot after the sun goes down or before the sun comes up. What's going on there?
WARD: Sure. Places that we live in our built environment hold on to heat that's absorbed during the day. So what happens is overnight, those things, like pavement and buildings, they absorb it during the day and release it slowly at night. So this is one of the reasons why we see overnight temperatures remaining persistently high. And in areas that are experiencing the current heat dome, this is particularly important because these are areas, you know, that were never developed with this kind of temperature regime in mind.
And so many people either don't have adequate cooling or they don't have air conditioning at all in their homes, and our buildings are not built to take into account, you know, this type of overnight heat to capture wind flow overnight and things like that.
MARTIN: I want to talk a little bit about your work. At Duke, you direct the Heat Policy Innovation Hub. Can you give us an example or two of how people are trying to adapt to these temperatures?
WARD: Sure. A lot of the work that we do involves quantifying the - particularly the economic impact of heat across major economic sectors. And we also do work on the impact of heat on human health. I like to think of this sort of as well-being - right? - our well-being includes our health outcomes, but also our social and economic well-being. And I think one of the things that we've been finding is a lot of the infrastructure that we have in the U.S. - take schools, for example - many schools in the country do not have air conditioning or lack adequate A.C.
What's that going to cost to upgrade our current schools' infrastructure? And how might we think about ways to do that, whether it's through public financing, private financing? What kinds of ways can we think about doing that through policy mechanisms?
MARTIN: Can you give us some examples of places around the country or perhaps around the world that are addressing this in some innovative ways?
WARD: Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, you know, you - we've just finished hearing all about the heat wave that was happening in Europe, for example. And, of course, that's a really big deal in Europe because a lot of their populations do not have access to cooling. And so a lot of what we're seeing in Europe is the development of things like early warning systems. We have some here in the U.S., but not as widespread.
We also are seeing, you know, development of - they're thinking very critically about how do we activate cooling centers to protect our populations? We can learn from those lessons. India is doing an enormous amount of work on thinking about low-cost cooling and efficient cooling. Countries across Asia are working - I know when I was in Hong Kong many years ago, they were already putting up sensors throughout the city.
So there's a lot of work going on and a lot of opportunities for us in the U.S. to learn from what's happening globally.
MARTIN: It sounds like you have, like, a really big fan where you are. So (laughter) I think fans are...
WARD: I do.
MARTIN: ...Fans are always a good idea, aren't they?
WARD: They are. They are (laughter).
MARTIN: OK (laughter). That's Ashley Ward. She directs the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University. Thank you so much for joining us.
WARD: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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