well dangerous heat is gripping the state this week with temperatures soaring into the high 90s a heat advisory is in effect today from the National Weather Service and excessive heat warnings along with advisories are in effect Friday that's what oppressive humidity is expected to push the heat index into the triple digits forecasters are also calling for strong storms that could develop well into tonight causing possible flash flooding and even damaging winds scientists recently confirmed July is on track to be the world's hottest month on record warning this is just the beginning especially for those living in densely packed cities the nonpartisan Research Center climate Central has been tracking what it calls Urban heat zones and found Newark was among the top 44 cities in the nation listed as having some of the most intense heat effects for more I'm joined by Peter Gerard he's vice president of communications for climate Central Peter Gerard it's great to talk to you obviously we are in the midst of a heat wave and so never is it more important to talk about all of the factors that can make this heat more intense for some people you all mapped that out what did you find for Newark and the factors contributing to the intensity here so we looked at the urban heat island effect which is a neighborhood by neighborhood phenomena where some neighborhoods because of the way they're built are simply hotter than others and in Newark you see that really intensely around the airport you see it in the iron bound area where temperatures that the residents feel are often as much as nine or even 10 degrees hotter than those in in cooler places and that's because why we have so much pavement as opposed to open areas or are there other factors that play there too that's one of the important areas there's something called Albedo which looks at all of the materials in a city that either reflect or absorb heat and what you're seeing are more materials that absorb heat so these are dark rooftops these are sidewalks streets essentially the whole built environment that can absorb heat and radiate it out to people who live there and when you don't have Parks when you don't have green spaces that exaggerates the urban heat island effect okay so compare for me uh how Newark ranks you know stacked up to some of our other major cities I'm thinking of course our neighbor in New York but also places like Chicago or maybe even on the West Coast or in the South where they've really seen heat indexes in the triple digits for weeks now every city is different and older cities tend to have exaggerated uh Urban Eaton effects excuse me when you look at the South and particularly in the southwest there's sort of an interesting difference you tend to see cities with less Building height you tend to see wider streets and more airflow you tend to see lighter Building Materials in some of them and that contributes to a slightly lower Urban heat island effect than what you're seeing in Newark and what you're seeing a lot of older Northeastern cities so even though they're experiencing more heat their Urban heat island effect is not necessarily as high as what you're seeing here locally do we anticipate that this is only going to get worse of course development uh rarely scales back we had the UN Secretary General saying that we're out of um global warming we're a global boiling uh just recently when we hit the hottest temperatures on record in July how great a risk are we at this is a really significant human health risk and you're right the temperatures are only going to go up you're probably not necessarily going to see a more advanced Urban heat island effect but that Urban heat island effect is going to increase temperatures on top of these already increasing soaring heat that you're seeing in July so this is something that in terms of the way it affects people isn't going away it's only going to amplify all right Peter Gerard with climate Central thank you so much oh thank you I really appreciate it [Music] [Music]