Can We Beat the Summer Heat?
Blazing a trail... |
Nature is truly amazing, and it is where I find myself most at home. When I was a kid my brothers and I fought all the time, and when there is fighting there is grounding. But we weren’t always grounded from our Game Boys and other toys. In fact, we were often grounded from going outside! So, we would have to spend our nice day staring at the warm sun and other kids playing basketball from inside our house.
A lot of my love for the outdoors started because of my parents. Every summer we were always taking trips to National Parks, rather than the beach. We would hike, kayak, white water raft…you name it. Going to Zoos, aquariums and nature preserves on our free days during the summer. While my mom took us around here, there and everywhere; my dad got us outside by getting us involved with Boy Scouts. My dad has a few goals in life, one of them being that all of his sons become Eagle Scouts (he fell just short of becoming an Eagle Scout). He was successful in this…me and my two brothers are all Eagle Scouts. More importantly, he gave us the opportunity to explore new places and learn new things. No trip was ever the same, there was always something to learn, friends to make. It was truly an amazing experience. Even today we reminisce about trips we went on and arguments we had.
Then, there comes a time where you have to leave the nest. Take that leap and go out on your own to experience new things. In high school I had no clue what I wanted to do in college. So, I went to my homeroom teacher and asked for his advice. He mentioned a program, which participated in, called the Student Conservation Association. This is a non-profit group, which takes high schoolers from around the country and sends them to different National parks, forests, etc. to do conservation work.
*Fun Fact: Liz Putnam, the founder of the SCA, wrote it into existence for her Doctoral Thesis!* After doing this for two summers I knew my position was unwavering. I wanted to help preserves the places I loved. |
War Damn. |
During fall, sophomore year I was just coming off dropping out of engineering school and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I was deciding between atmospheric science and landscape architecture, potentially switching schools and was completely lost. Then I came across this video one day and everything changed!
Here is a really neat video, which first got me interested in studying Urban Heat!
After 4 so-so years in undergrad my journey has led me to Auburn, Alabama.
Now, if you were to ask me this time last year where I would be in a year I would have not said Auburn. To be honest, I wasn't even quite sure where Auburn was before coming here.
However, here I am. Afforded the opportunity to be part of a wonderful cohort learning about and conducting research on Climate Resilience. Primarily, I am working on Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) and understanding how a changing climate might induce migration into southeastern cities.
Now, if you were to ask me this time last year where I would be in a year I would have not said Auburn. To be honest, I wasn't even quite sure where Auburn was before coming here.
However, here I am. Afforded the opportunity to be part of a wonderful cohort learning about and conducting research on Climate Resilience. Primarily, I am working on Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) and understanding how a changing climate might induce migration into southeastern cities.
Researching in a Changing Climate
https://community.wmo.int/activity-areas/urban/urban-heat-island
So, what is Urban Heat?
Well, the idea of the Urban Heat Island is that dense, built, urban centers are warmer than their surrounding green, rural counterparts. Cities are made of materials which are highly absorptive of incoming solar radiation, which leads to thermal storage. Comparatively, rural environments are more reflective of incoming solar radiation, so they are cooler. This leads to a difference in temperatures and cities being warmer.
Cities also gain heat through other human induced activities, such as the use of A/C or automobile combustion!
We know that our climate is warming and our cities are getting hotter and hotter. In the future, we can expect cities in the north to start feeling like cities in the Midwest. Those midwestern cities starting to feel like southern cities and so on.
Click here to see what your city may feel like in the future
Urban heat is not the only thing affecting cities: increases in precipitation and urban flooding, sea level rise, increases in drought & heat waves, prolonged hurricanes, wildfires and other climate induced phenomena. With all these events potentially impacting cities in the future, not everyone is going to stick around. We can expect people to be on the move as cities experience these worsening events. These people, then, have to have somewhere new to call home.
Migration of people into Panama City, Florida between 2017-2018
It is the goal of my research to understand what drives people to move and understand where people might move to in the future. Many of these 'climate migrants' may call smaller-medium sized cities (like Columbus, GA) their homes, rather than bigger cities (like Atlanta, GA). Many of these smaller, inland cities are suffering from the same urban issues as larger cities. On top of this these smaller cities face crippling infrastructure, lack of funds, pre-existing environmental injustice and much more.
Add issues from the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate change migration is only going to exacerbate these growing pains. That is why we need to model and plan ahead! If we can potentially understand the future, we can be proactive and take necessary action to make our cities more resilient. We can make cities more habitable and cooler in the future, that way we may be able to beat the summer heat!
Add issues from the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate change migration is only going to exacerbate these growing pains. That is why we need to model and plan ahead! If we can potentially understand the future, we can be proactive and take necessary action to make our cities more resilient. We can make cities more habitable and cooler in the future, that way we may be able to beat the summer heat!
Resources
https://community.wmo.int/activity-areas/urban/urban-heat-island
https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/
https://www.vox.com/a/weather-climate-change-us-cities-global-warming
https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/heat-island-resources
Literature
Shepherd, J. Marshall; Andersen, T.; Strother, Chris; Horst, A.; Bounoua, L.; Mitra, C. 2013. Urban climate archipelagos: a new framework for urban impacts on climate. Earthzine. https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/46043
Hauer, M.E., 2017. Migration induced by sea-level rise could reshape the US population landscape. Nature Climate Change, 7, pp.321-325. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate3271
Liu, Xi, Ransom Hollister, and Clio Andris. 2018. “Wealthy Hubs and Poor Chains: Constellations in the U.S. Urban Migration System.” In , 73–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65993-0_6.
Terando, Adam J., Jennifer Costanza, Curtis Belyea, Robert R. Dunn, Alexa McKerrow, and Jaime A. Collazo. 2014. “The Southern Megalopolis: Using the Past to Predict the Future of Urban Sprawl in the Southeast U.S.” Edited by Craig A. Layman. PLoS ONE 9 (7): e102261. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102261.
https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/
https://www.vox.com/a/weather-climate-change-us-cities-global-warming
https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/heat-island-resources
Literature
Shepherd, J. Marshall; Andersen, T.; Strother, Chris; Horst, A.; Bounoua, L.; Mitra, C. 2013. Urban climate archipelagos: a new framework for urban impacts on climate. Earthzine. https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/46043
Hauer, M.E., 2017. Migration induced by sea-level rise could reshape the US population landscape. Nature Climate Change, 7, pp.321-325. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate3271
Liu, Xi, Ransom Hollister, and Clio Andris. 2018. “Wealthy Hubs and Poor Chains: Constellations in the U.S. Urban Migration System.” In , 73–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65993-0_6.
Terando, Adam J., Jennifer Costanza, Curtis Belyea, Robert R. Dunn, Alexa McKerrow, and Jaime A. Collazo. 2014. “The Southern Megalopolis: Using the Past to Predict the Future of Urban Sprawl in the Southeast U.S.” Edited by Craig A. Layman. PLoS ONE 9 (7): e102261. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102261.