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On the ‘Pernicious and Hidden’ Toll of Chronic Heat

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V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI), spoke to several media outlets about the dangers of rising temperatures as well as cross-sector efforts to make communities more resilient to extreme heat. In a Guardian piece about this summer’s brutal heat wave in the United States, Turner noted that “chronic heat exposure can affect people in really pernicious and hidden ways.” On Spectrum News 1, she reminded viewers that heat not only contributes to more deaths than all other weather-related disasters, it also touches every aspect of daily life, from prenatal health, children’s learning, losses in labor and stresses on the medical system. Turner also spoke with the Los Angeles Times and the podcast America Adapts about the work that will be done by the new federally funded Center of Excellence for Heat Resilient Communities, to be housed at LCI. The center will be an “all-hands-on-deck approach to learn from existing efforts to prevent the worst consequences of extreme heat.”

Read the Guardian article
Watch the Spectrum News report
Read the L.A. Times article
Listen to the America Adapts episode

 

Downsizing Local News Contributes to Crumbling Infrastructure

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Reading strong local journalism is tied to greater support for funding dams, sewers and other basic infrastructure vital to climate resilience, according to new research from UCLA and Duke University. The study, published this month in the journal Political Behavior, found that reading fictionalized samples of news coverage with specific local details about infrastructure maintenance requirements led to as much as 10% more electoral support for infrastructure spending compared to reading bare-bones reporting. Just a few extra paragraphs of context in the mock news stories not only increased support for spending, but also increased voters’ willingness to hold politicians accountable for infrastructure neglect by voting them out of office. “Heat, floods, drought and fire are putting new stress on aging and deteriorating infrastructure, which must be maintained to protect communities against these growing climate risks,” said Megan Mullin, faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and co-author of the study. “Our study shows that investing in facilities that improve our resilience to climate hazards requires investing in the health of local news.” Deep cuts to local news staffs nationwide have led to reduced original reporting and local political stories in favor of national news that can be centrally produced and shared in many newspapers within the same ownership structure, the study’s authors noted. “Empty newsrooms and AI reporting don’t provide communities with the information they need to make investments for their own health and security,” said Mullin, a UCLA Luskin professor of public policy whose research focuses on environmental politics. — Alison Hewitt

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UCLA to Lead New Center of Excellence for Heat Resilient Communities The Luskin Center for Innovation, in collaboration with 50 partners, receives a first-of-its-kind federal grant to help guard against climate danger

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By Mara Elana Burstein

We’re not prepared for rising temperatures. Heat poses a growing and inequitable threat to the health, economies and security of communities everywhere, yet heat governance remains underdeveloped, especially in comparison to other climate hazards.

The UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI) wants to change that. Under the leadership of its associate director, V. Kelly Turner, LCI has been awarded a $2.25 million grant to establish a Center of Excellence for Heat Resilient Communities. Funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS), the Center of Excellence will engage and support communities in determining the best strategies for local heat mitigation and management.

“Some communities have begun to plan for heat, but most lack the capacity or resources to engage in comprehensive planning,” said Turner, who leads LCI’s heat equity research and along with colleagues has long called for a coordinated national approach to heat resilience. “With this grant, we can help the federal government establish a robust, actionable and durable plan to support those efforts.”  

Turner’s co-leads for this project are Sara Meerow at Arizona State University and Ladd Keith at the University of Arizona. With more than 50 other partners committed, the grant will enable the creation of an international network of heat scholars and practitioners. One outcome will be a framework to identify and evaluate policies, protocols and lessons for heat resilience that can be applied in the U.S. and internationally. 

Thirty communities and tribal entities will be selected for direct technical assistance and comprehensive educational support during the three-year grant period. By centering equity in its approach, the Center for Excellence will systematically work with and fund historically excluded communities and help meet the Biden Administration’s goals under Justice40. This will broaden the impact and benefits of engagement, heat data and information, and other approaches, like benefit-cost analysis, to inform effective and equitable planning for heat resilience. 

The ultimate goal is to protect public health and well-being from acute and chronic heat dangers through equity-centered, data-informed, whole-of-government approaches to mitigate and manage heat in diverse communities and heat-exposure settings.

Funding for the Center of Excellence for Heat Resilient Communities is provided through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and is part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. This is one of two new National Integrated Heat Health Information System centers of excellence. The complementary Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring, to be led by the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, N.C., will assist community-serving organizations in conducting local climate and health studies.

“The impacts of extreme heat caused by climate change are an increasing threat to our health, ecosystems and economy,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “Thanks to President Biden’s ambitious climate agenda, this investment will support new NIHHIS Centers of Excellence to help protect historically excluded communities from the dangers of extreme heat, boost climate resilience and increase awareness on best practices to tackle the climate crisis.”

To learn more about how LCI research informs heat equity solutions to improve human well-being and quality of life where we live, work, learn and play, see LCI’s heat equity webpage.

Millard-Ball Receives Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award

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Adam Millard-Ball, professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin, has received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award, which recognizes outstanding accomplishments by scientists and scholars from around the world. Trained as an economist, geographer and urban planner, Millard-Ball conducts research on transportation, the environment and urban data science. Award recipients are invited to collaborate with scholars based in Germany, and Millard-Ball is currently on sabbatical at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin. Each year, the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award, named after the noted German astronomer and mathematician, is given to 10 to 20 internationally renowned academics. The awards are funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research and administered by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which promotes scientific advances, academic exchanges and cultural dialogue across borders. Award recipients were honored at a symposium in Bamberg, Germany, in March.

 

A Push to Plant Trees in L.A.’s Hottest Places

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Edith de Guzman of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation authored a blog post on a new step-by-step framework to help residents, advocates, city leaders and planners work together on real cooling solutions in the hottest neighborhoods. “Beneath the reputation of Los Angeles as a land of cars, palms and sunshine lies a reality of stark inequalities — including access to trees and shade,” de Guzman wrote for The Equation, the blog of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Nearly 20% of L.A.’s urban forest is concentrated where only 1% of the city’s population lives, endangering lower-income communities and people of color with hotter-feeling summers and poor environmental quality.” de Guzman, a University of California Cooperative Extension specialist on water equity and adaptation policy, stressed the importance of partnering with community members to cool their neighborhoods and combat shade inequity.

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Turner on Shade Equity Master Plan for Rural California Desert Region

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An Associated Press article on efforts to increase shade equity in a rural desert community in Riverside County cited V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI), whose work focuses on cities adapting to hotter conditions. The master plan inaugurated in the Eastern Coachella Valley, where summer temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees, is among other efforts in the United States to increase climate resilience in Latino and other marginalized communities disproportionately exposed to extreme heat. The project, a collaboration of partners including LCI, is funded by a grant from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research in California. “What was sort of being left off the table was how heat is affecting rural communities,” said Turner, associate professor of urban planning and geography at UCLA. Community members, part of a collaborative workshop with Luskin urban planning students on social justice issues, are also supporting the project.

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Turner on Schools’ Potential to Provide an Oasis From Heat

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An LAist article on efforts to increase green spaces on Los Angeles school campuses to provide cool relief in a warming world cited V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. By 2050, parts of L.A. that are prone to extreme heat could see at least 30 additional days with temperatures above 90 degrees. Turner said it’s important to think about schools as community resources, especially for kids who come from historically disinvested and disadvantaged communities. “If kids live in a home without air conditioning or a cool place to go on hot days, then come to school, which also lacks cooling inside and shade outside, their core body temperatures are never getting down to safe levels,” said Turner, an associate professor of urban planning. “That’s going to cause them to have difficulty concentrating … and it’s going to be very, very hard for a child to learn in that context.”

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Turner on Cities’ Strategies for Staying Cool

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V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to Spectrum News about the importance of shade in providing relief from rising temperatures. “Shade is the most effective way we have to keep people cool outside,” said Turner, an associate professor of urban planning. “All else equal, someone standing in shade can be 20 to 40 degrees Celsius cooler than somebody standing in the full sun. And so we need to think of ways that include trees and non-tree shade structures to keep people cool.” Turner also spoke to CalMatters about artificial turf as a replacement for lawns, noting that the synthetic material can trap heat, at times making it hotter than asphalt. And she spoke to Grist about one downside of the use of cool-pavement technology: When the sun is at its highest, heat reflected off its surface can actually be absorbed by the people and structures nearby.

Watch the Spectrum News interview
Read the CalMatters article
Read the Grist article

 

Mullin on the Contradictions of Central California’s Climate Emergency

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Megan Mullin, faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the San Joaquin Valley, where flagging resilience to drought, floods and heat have made it one of the front lines of climate change in America. The region is also the center of oil and gas production in California and skews conservative, creating many internal contradictions, said Mullin, co-author of a recent paper that found that climate change is projected to disproportionately affect Republican voters. The valley’s residents are “getting messages that action on climate is jeopardizing their well-being, jeopardizing their livelihoods,” she said, yet at the same time they face dried-up wells, dreadful air quality, huge flood risks and other perils. Mullin did point to Fresno as one area that is making climate gains through the state’s Transformative Climate Communities program, which funds hyper-local projects in places that have been disproportionately affected by legacy pollution and other environmental hazards.

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On Palm Trees and Climate Resiliency

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A Los Angeles Times article on cities reconsidering the value of Southern California’s iconic palm trees checked in with V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. Planting trees is a key element of many climate resiliency plans, but the towering palms don’t provide much shade or sequester carbon well. “A pole on the side of the street isn’t providing much shade. And a palm tree is kind of similar,” said Turner, whose work focuses on how cities adapt to hotter conditions. The article pointed to Center for Innovation research showing that shade can reduce heat stress in the human body from 25% to 30% throughout the day. Turner also spoke to Resources Radio about how heat impacts U.S. schools. The conversation touched on architectural and landscape design choices that can mitigate hot temperatures, funding sources for improving infrastructure and issues of equity in allocating such resources to schools. 

Read the L.A. Times article
Listen to the Resources Radio podcast