Feeling the heat in your neighborhood?
On Friday 9/2, on the five year anniversary of San Francisco’s most extreme heat event, volunteers are mapping urban heat islands to discover which neighborhoods get hottest during heat waves.
The climate crisis is global. Its impacts are local.
In San Francisco, extreme heat events are increasing in frequency and intensity, with significant, cascading, and compounding impacts on public health. And while all San Franciscans are vulnerable to the health impacts of extreme heat, some neighborhoods and communities may be disproportionately impacted. Urban heat islands are areas that can be up to 20 degrees hotter than nearby neighborhoods.
The Urban Heat Watch is an action to map heat in San Francisco’s neighborhoods to understand how our built environment: our green space and our tree canopy, our pavement and our skyscrapers, can create neighborhood-level heat islands that fuel health impacts.
- What is the Urban Heat Watch?
- The Urban Heat Watch asks volunteers to act as community scientists and spend the hottest day of the year traversing San Francisco’s neighborhoods. Using vehicle-mounted heat sensors, volunteers will drive pre-identified routes to collect temperature and humidity data that shows just which communities are particularly exposed to extreme temperatures.
- Why is this Important?
- Vulnerability to extreme heat depends on exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity.
- Exposure is the degree to which a person or community is physically exposed to extreme temperatures.
- Two people could be similarly exposed to extreme temperature, but only one may develop health impacts. Why? Sensitivity is physical reaction to extreme heat. Populations that are most sensitive to extreme temperatures include older adults, children, and people with pre-existing health conditions such as cardiovascular illness or asthma or diabetes.
- Adaptive Capacity is the access to economic, political, social, and cultural resources to prepare for or respond to extreme heat: Can you purchase an fan or air conditioner? Do you have a network you can depend on for support?
- The urban heat watch helps measure exposure. The final deliverable will be publicly available detailed urban heat island maps that can be used to communicate risk, measure health impacts, and advocate for resources to address those health impacts, such as green infrastructure and weatherization resources to cool the hottest neighborhoods.
- Vulnerability to extreme heat depends on exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity.
- What do volunteers do?
- On Campaign Day, volunteers will collect thousands of temperature and humidity measurements at 6am, 3pm, and 7pm.
- Volunteers will collect this data by driving pre-identified routes through San Francisco’s neighborhoods.
- We’re looking for volunteers to act as both drivers and navigators. Ideally, drivers and navigators would know each other and sign up as a pair, but we’re happy to place people together as well.
- When is the campaign day?
- Friday September 2nd: The 5th Anniversary of the Labor Day Heat Wave.
- How can I follow along?
- Volunteers will be taking pictures and tweeting #SFUrbanHeatWatch.
- We’ll update this space after the campaign with information
- When maps are available, we’ll let you know!
San Francisco Urban Heat WatchTo keep up with the Summer 2022 campaigns, subscribe to the Heat Beat Newsletter, check out the National Integrated Heat Health Information System website, or follow #UrbanHeatMaps2022 on social media.