Decibel
The Urban Heat Island
Clip | 7m 12sVideo has Closed Captions
Parts of Austin are nearly 8 degrees hotter than others, so who's feeling the heat?
Austin has dealt with record-breaking heat this summer. But some areas of town are hotter than others, and that can mean higher energy bills for residents. But where is this happening, and who’s paying more to stay cool?
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Decibel is a local public television program presented by Austin PBS
Funding for Decibel is provided in part by Texas Mutual and Roxanne Elder & Scott Borders
Decibel
The Urban Heat Island
Clip | 7m 12sVideo has Closed Captions
Austin has dealt with record-breaking heat this summer. But some areas of town are hotter than others, and that can mean higher energy bills for residents. But where is this happening, and who’s paying more to stay cool?
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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[Reporter] Bertha Hernandez lives in Dove Springs and selling her homemade tamales and pupusas is her main source of income.
But she's making less money this year.
Austin has dealt with record breaking heat this summer.
But some areas of town are hotter than others, and that can mean higher energy bills for residents.
But where is this happening?
And who's paying more to stay cool?
[music plays] [Reporter] So which areas are hotter?
Marc Coudert is with the City of Austin's Office of Resilience and he's been looking into this.
[Marc] We have data that shows heat from satellites and it mostly shows areas like parking lots, the airport and so on.
And that's valuable information, but doesn't really tell you what's happening on the ground level.
[Reporter] So the City of Austin teamed up with researchers at the University of Texas to see exactly what was going on.
What they found was higher temperatures in places with less greenery.
This is called the urban heat island effect.
But what is it and how does it work?
Dr. Dev Niyogi with U.T.
explains.
[Dev] The solar radiation that comes in over this urban areas, it gets absorbed into the streets, into the steel, into all the infrastructure that is required.
And so when you measure the temperatures, you will get that there are blobs which are much hotter.
It can look like an island, and that's where it gets referred to as a urban heat island.
Those temperatures could be different by anywhere between 5 to 10 degrees.
[Reporter] This is what Bertha and others are dealing with.
Areas with impervious cover absorb and reflect the sun's rays, increasing temperatures.
But not everyone is feeling the heat.
[Dev] It is not uniform across the city.
Some parts of the city it is much cooler than other parts of the city are much, much warmer.
[Marc] North Austin was particularly sensitive to heat.
But we also understood that the whole Eastern Crescent from Rundburg, Montopolis down to Dove Springs are heavily sensitive to heat.
[Reporter] Why the different temperatures?
Some of this can be traced back to redlining practices that started in the 1930s, when the federal government labeled non-white neighborhoods as risky places to invest home loans.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, research shows that redlined communities have less vegetative cover, higher temperatures and increased health risks.
[Marc] If you look at maps that look at health outcomes or maps that look at race or income, they essentially show the same maps.
And we, through talking to community members, understand that they are the most sensitive to heat but also cold, bad air quality and so on.
[Reporter] These neighborhoods also often have older homes that can be harder to keep cool, according to Dr. Zoltan Nagy.
He says architecture and climate change at the University of Texas.
[Zoltan] So older homes are particularly vulnerable to this.
You have, you know, you single pane windows, the holes around the windows hot air comes in directly, not just through heat transfer, but mass transfer.
So that hot air comes in or the cold air goes out.
Plus, of course, over time you deteriorate.
So anything built before the eighties is probably not even insulated at this point.
[Reporter] Many homes in Dove Springs, including Bertha's, were built in the seventies.
And older homes, plus higher temperatures equals higher energy bills.
[Dev] They happen to be in neighborhoods where you probably don't have very energy efficient homes.
And clearly, as a result of that, you need to generate more energy use to cool the house.
And as a result of that, you are going to have to pay more.
[Zoltan] There is another thing that happens, which is that those who cannot afford it delay energy use and so they turn their HVAC on a lot later.
It's a lot warmer inside.
And so that creates all kinds of adverse like health effects.
And then because due to climate change, it gets worse outside, right?
Maybe you delayed turning on the A.C., but then the conditions lasts longer and longer.
So it's really not good.
[Marc] So they have to make a decision between not using energy and staying cool.
And that's a very hard conversation to have.
[Reporter] It's a conversation Bertha has had more than once.
[Reporter] Heat has pushed electricity bills higher for everyone.
But for lower income households that increase is harder to deal with.
[Dev] The cost associated, it might seem like it is $50 more, but that $50 would be quite different as against certain neighborhoods that this might be a significant dent in the monthly budget.
[Reporter] That can also make it difficult to add expensive upgrades.
[Zoltan] The problem with things like insulation or better windows or a proper ceiling is that it's very expensive, so energy is too cheap basically, in some sense.
[Reporter] Cities can take steps to turn down the heat.
Marc and his team are making recommendations to the city council that include adding trees and improving bus stops, but they agree that action needs to be taken and quickly.
[Marc] We need to be thinking about what we need today, but also what are strategies going to be doing in the next year or two years as climate change gets worse?
[Reporter] For now, Bertha says she'll continue to get out early and get back inside before the temperature rises.
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