February 8, 2024 • 24 mins
With the beautiful weather we've been having recently, it might be hard to remember that record-breaking heat in the summer has become the new normal - and urban areas are on the frontlines. To adapt we need to develop new strategies to beat the heat when it's at its worst.
Our guest today is Dr. Adam Rosenblatt. Adam was one of the leaders of an urban heat study conducted in Jacksonville to understand which parts of the city are the most vulnerable. This information is being used to guide future urban planning decisions.
We also cover the basics of climate change. Adam is a great communicator, and I think that he does a pretty good job of explaining the science in a way that is easy to understand, but also very pragmatic. Even if you are already familiar with the science of climate change, it's worth a listen - you might pick up a few ideas that will help you in your own climate conversations with friends and family.
Get Connected:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamrosenblatt/
Helpful Links:
Interactive Heat Map of Jacksonville
Climate Perceptions by County
Clean Air Northeast Florida Greenhouse Gas Inventory
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Sustainable North Florida.
I'm your host, LorianneSantamaria.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The great thing is that there's tons of solutions
to these heat issues.
Right, there's a lot of optionsout there for how we can tackle
this.
We just have to decide to do itand we have to put the money in
place to fund these kinds ofprojects, and luckily, the city
is starting to do that.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
With the beautiful weather we've been having
recently, it might be hard toremember, but record-breaking
heat in the summer has becomethe new normal, and urban areas
are the front lines.
In order to adjust, we need todevelop new strategies to beat
the heat when it's at its worst.
Our guest today is Dr AdamRosenblatt.
He was one of the leaders of anurban heat study that was
conducted in Jacksonville tounderstand which parts of the
(00:45):
city are the most vulnerable.
This information is being usedto guide future urban planning
decisions.
We also covered the basics ofclimate change.
Adam's a great communicator andI think he does a pretty good
job of explaining the science ina way that's easy to understand
but also very pragmatic.
Even if you're already familiarwith the science of climate
change, it's worth a listen.
You might pick up a few ideasthat will help you in your own
(01:07):
climate conversations withfriends and family.
Here's my discussion with DrAdam Rosenblatt.
Welcome, adam.
Looking forward to thisconversation, we've asked you to
join us on the show to helpshed light on a topic that I
think anyone who was inJacksonville this past summer
will understand, and that's therecord-breaking heat that we
experienced.
But before we get into that,can you just introduce yourself
(01:28):
at a high level to the audienceand let them know who you are
and what you do.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, I'm an assistant professor of biology
at the University of NorthFlorida here in Jacksonville and
I do research on the effects ofclimate change on plants and
animals and the ecosystems thatwe rely on.
But I also have a long historyof advocacy and activism when it
comes to climate changelegislation and education and
(01:54):
outreach, trying to get peopleto understand what's going on
and why we need to be concernedabout the climate crisis.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Great.
Can you tell us about whatdrove you in this direction?
Is it the way that you grew up?
Is it something that youlearned later on in life?
What led you down this path?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, the first time I was sort of exposed to the
idea of climate change was bychance really.
I mean, I wasn't seeking it outor anything.
I did this summer program whenI was in high school at
Villanova University and as partof the summer program we were
put into groups and we had tochoose sort of a project to do,
(02:30):
and it just so happened thatthat summer was when there was a
lot of conversation going onabout the Kyoto Protocol, which
was one of the early attempts atan international agreement
around climate change, and thatis really what sparked my
interest in it.
And you know, this was likewhat.
This was 2001 or somethingright.
(02:50):
So climate change wasn't as bigof a talking point in the media
as it is today.
I mean, I'm sure I've heardabout it, but I don't think I'd
really spent a lot of timethinking about it until that
summer.
But that was the thing thatfirst got me interested in it.
And then, of course, Icontinued learning about it in
college, my first scientificresearch thinking about animal
(03:11):
behavior and how animals areresponding to changes in the
environment.
So it all kind of built fromthere.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Okay, so before we get into urban heat, which will
be our main topic today, can yougive us a little bit of a
background on global warming ingeneral and why temperatures are
rising?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, so temperatures are rising because of
greenhouse gas emissions, whichcome from burning fossil fuel.
They come from land use change,like cutting down forests for
agriculture or to build housingdevelopments, but the main thing
is burning fossil fuels andthat releases carbon dioxide, it
releases methane, it releasesnitrous oxides, and all of those
(03:48):
different gases help trap heaton the planet, with carbon
dioxide being the biggestcontributor.
The way that I like to talkabout it for people who aren't
as familiar with the concept isthe reason that the earth is
warm at all is because we havethis blanket of greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere that helptrap heat, and that's a good
thing.
But what we're doing is we areadding too much greenhouse gases
(04:11):
to the atmosphere too quicklyand that is increasing the
thickness of the blanket Right,and so it's just trapping a lot
more heat than what otherwisehave been trapped.
And the number that I tell topeople that's always shocking is
the amount of extra energy heatenergy that's been trapped on
(04:32):
the planet since 1971.
Because of greenhouse gasemissions is about 381 zeta
joules of energy, which Irealize is not anything that
anybody would understand,because nobody knows what a zeta
joule is, but if you convertthat into something more
tangible.
It's the equivalent of fourHiroshima sized nuclear bombs
(04:57):
exploding every second of everyday since 1971.
And the amount of heat that'sreleased from a nuclear
explosion.
You multiply that by four andthat's how much extra heat has
been trapped on the planet.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Every day.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, every second of every day since 1971.
It's a shocking number.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Can we dig a little bit further into urban heat and
why cities themselves are maybehotter than their surroundings?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, so global warming is causing temperatures
to rise all across the globe.
But what has been noticed for along time now this isn't sort
of new revelation is that citiesall around the globe they are
getting hotter faster than moralareas, and that is because of
something called the urban heatisland effect, where the types
(05:44):
of materials that we use tobuild cities and build the
infrastructure for cities, theyare actually very good at
trapping heat.
So asphalt right, asphalt isreally good at trapping heat
from the sun and then itre-radiates that heat out into
the air all day and night aswell.
The nights are actually gettingwarmer faster than the daytime
(06:05):
is.
You know the types of buildingsthat we build.
How tall are they?
How close are they together?
How much tree coverage do youhave in like a downtown area?
All of these decisions that aremade in terms of how we build
cities, they contribute to howbad the urban heat island effect
can get in a given place.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
So you were recently involved in a heat mapping study
that was conducted.
Can you tell us more about thatand the genesis of it and why a
heat mapping study is importantat all?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, the federal government, through the National
Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration.
They've had a program, I think,for maybe six or seven years
now, where they've been givingmoney to different cities around
the country to try and maptheir heat in their city and
which neighborhoods are hot,which neighborhoods are a little
bit cooler, why that's the case, and then just basically
(06:53):
helping cities gather data thatthey can use to reduce the
threat of extreme heat in theircities, and so I was the leader
of the Jacksonville version ofthis.
We applied for funding at theend of 2021, and then we got the
funding and part of the fundingcame from the city as well that
we carried out the study in thesummer of 2022, in June.
(07:15):
We chose a day that we knew wasgoing to be quite hot it was
June 18th and what we did was wesent out volunteers in their
cars across the city, acrossabout 400 square miles of the
city, so about half of the city,and those volunteers mounted
these temperature sensors on thesides of their cars and the
(07:36):
temperature sensors recorded thetemperature, they recorded the
humidity and they recorded thewind speed every second that
they were operational, and thesevolunteers would drive their
cars on specific routes throughdifferent neighborhoods.
We have this data on a block byblock basis.
Now for Jacksonville, which isreally powerful for planning
purposes.
What we found is that the partsof the city that have less tree
(07:59):
coverage, that have moreasphalt, more commercial land,
more industrial land and morebig roadways like highways,
those parts of the city are muchhotter than neighborhoods that
are more residential and havemore tree coverage and less
space dedicated to parking lots.
So, like the hottest part ofthe city, one of the hottest
(08:20):
parts of the city was downtown,right around City Hall, which
shouldn't really be a surpriseto anybody whereas cooler parts
of the city were further south,on the south side, in San Marco
and in San Jose, and getting outtoward the beaches a little bit
.
But there were pockets of heatin various places around the
city.
And just to give you a sense ofthe temperature differential,
(08:42):
the minimum temperature that wewere recording was about 95
degrees on that day and themaximum temperature was about
116.
So that shows what a differencethe urban heat island effect
can make.
That's a 20 degree Fahrenheitdifference in temperature, which
can be the difference betweenlife and death during the middle
(09:03):
of an extreme heat wave.
The reason we wanted to collectthis data and give the city more
of an insight into whichneighborhoods are facing extreme
heat risk is because it's ahuge public health disaster
waiting to happen.
Heat is already the number onecause of death for people
attributable to weather events.
A lot of people might thinkthat more people die during
(09:24):
hurricanes or die duringtornadoes or a flood or whatever
it might be, but actually thenumber one killer of people is
heat, and so if we have theseparts of the city that are
extremely hot, it's going tocontribute to people's heat
stress, it can lead to heatstroke, it can lead to emergency
room visits and it can lead todeath, tragically.
So our goal in collecting someof this data was to give the
(09:48):
city the information that itneeded to hopefully make changes
.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Given that now we have this data of what parts of
the city are more affected byheat than others, or more prone
to do these higher heat levelsthan others, what are the things
that we can do with urbandesign?
I guess I'd like to understandboth a technical perspective
which you talked to a little bit, some of those things but then
also from a policy perspective,what are the things that we can
try to push our city councilmembers or our mayor's office
(10:14):
towards doing in order toimprove the situation going
forward?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
The great thing is that there's tons of solutions
to these heat issues.
Right, there's a lot of optionsout there for how we can tackle
this.
We just have to decide to do itand we have to put the money in
place to fund these kinds ofprojects.
And luckily the city isstarting to do that.
But so on the technical side ofthings, the one that people
point to most often, is plantingtrees.
Planting more trees, it's goingto provide more shade and it's
(10:39):
also going to help cool the air,because trees naturally cool
the air throughevapotranspiration, which is the
fancy word for them, pullingwater out of the ground and then
allowing it to release throughtheir leaves.
But a key point on that, youknow, people think, ok, we have
to plant trees and so let's justplant as many trees as we can.
It's a little more complicatedthan that, because you have to
plant the right trees in theright places, right, like here
(11:01):
in Jacksonville, you know, fordecades there's been a push to
plant lots of palm trees becausethey look nice, they, you know,
give kind of an exotic feel tothe city and they're easy to
maintain, relatively speaking.
But palm trees provide almostno shade.
They provide almost no coolingeffect through
(11:22):
evapotranspiration.
They are pretty useless in thatregard.
So, you know, it's not likeplanting a bunch of palm trees
is going to help.
We need bigger you know broadercanopy trees, oaks, maples, you
know things that are going toprovide more shade coverage, and
so we need those kinds of treesand we need them to be
maintained properly.
They have to be cared for, atleast specifically while they're
(11:44):
young saplings, and they needthe right amount of water and
they need the right amount ofspace.
So you have to do it in aspecific way to have the biggest
success from that.
Beyond tree planting, there's abunch of things we can do in
terms of landscape design acrossthe city.
There are rain gardens, thereare bioswales.
These are ways that you canspecifically landscape a part of
(12:07):
the city so that they help totrap more rainwater, rainwater
and stormwater and they act assort of wetlands, right, and
wetlands are very good atcooling down the surrounding
environment because there's, youknow, a bunch of standing water
there.
So that's on the technical sideof things, on the policy side
of things that you werementioning the big push there,
(12:30):
and it's not like a sexy thingto talk about, right, like it's
not like something people reallylike to focus on because it is
kind of nitty gritty down in theweeds work.
But we need to update land useregulations.
We need to update zoningregulations in the city, for
example St John's Town Center.
When the developers built StJohn's Town Center, I'm
(12:51):
imagining because I'm not anexpert on the zoning regulations
that were in place at the time,but I'm imagining that there
was no real requirement that thedevelopers have a certain
percentage of town centerdedicated to green space.
So updating zoning regulationsto say, hey, if you're going to
do a housing subdivision, ifyou're going to do another place
like a St John's Town Centersomewhere in Northeast Florida,
(13:14):
you have to have a certainamount of land dedicated to tree
coverage, dedicated to parks,dedicated to green space, like
that has to be required, right,and that would force developers
to make more urban heat friendlydecisions.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I'd like to pivot from talking about design and
what we can do to minimize urbanheat in the future to talking
about population health, and sowe have to live with this for a
certain period of time.
So what are the things that wecan do in order to protect our
population, especially given thefact that there is such a big
difference between certainneighborhoods in the heat that
they're going to experience?
(13:50):
It seems to me, from looking atthe map, that those
neighborhoods that have a higherexposure to heat are also
potentially more vulnerable.
Can you explain that a littlebit?
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, you're exactly right.
The city needs to put moreresources in towards and into
helping people Deal with thecurrent amount of heat and also
the future heat that the city isgoing to be experiencing.
We obviously want to be puttingfunding towards ameliorating
the heat through all of thegreen infrastructure things I
was just mentioning, but at thesame time, there has to be
funding for helping people todeal with the here and now
(14:19):
threats that they're facing, andheat that's certainly one of
them.
So there's kind of two aspectsto this.
There's an education aspect andthen there's an infrastructure
aspect.
The education aspect is justeducating people across the city
about Heat threats.
Most people don't think aboutHeat as something they need to
be worried about, especially inFlorida, because everybody knows
(14:39):
that Florida is a hot placeright, it's always been a hot
place but people frequentlydon't realize how dangerous
Extreme heat can be and howquickly it can lead to really
bad tragedies.
The city actually has a systemof putting out these heat alerts
.
There's a free service thatpeople can sign up for, and if
you sign up for it, you gettexts to your phone.
The city will send out, youknow, alerts that say hey, today
(15:01):
is an extreme heat day, pleasetake the necessary precautions.
So we need to get more peoplesigned up for services like that
so they're aware of which daysare the most threatening to them
.
And then we need to educatepeople about how to keep
themselves safe during theseevents, which means finding
places that have reliable airconditioning, drinking lots of
water, not working or playingSports or spending a lot of time
(15:22):
outside for long periods oftime on these days, maybe going
to a public pool or going to asplash pad with your kids or
something to help everybody cooloff.
So there's there's aneducational aspect to it.
And then the infrastructureaspect is making sure that all
the things I just mentioned areavailable in the Neighborhoods
that need it most.
Right, we saw at this pastsummer Anybody who was paying
attention to the news.
(15:43):
You know the city has a systemof public pools, but about half
of the public pools were not anoperation because they needed
repairs and the city had notdedicated enough funding in past
years to repair these pools sothat they were functional.
And so we were in the middle ofthis massive heat wave and
there were certain neighborhoodsthat didn't have access to a
public pool that should havebeen available.
(16:03):
So that's the kind ofinfrastructure that that I'm
talking about.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Thanks for listening.
If you're enjoying the episodeso far, please share the podcast
with your friends andcolleagues or, better yet,
subscribe on your favoritepodcast platform.
Those are the best ways tosupport our efforts to highlight
local sustainability stories.
And now back to the show.
I think we've covered urbanheat pretty well.
I'd like to zoom back out nowand Talk about carbon dioxide
(16:29):
levels in general.
So if CO2 levels in ouratmosphere are the main cause of
rising temperatures, what arethe things that we can be doing
to address it?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
There's a lot of things that we can do to address
it, but the thing that wereally need is we need to change
the system that we are allliving within, right, the
economic system that we havebuilt as a global human society
over the past 250 years is asystem that is dependent on
(16:58):
fossil fuels, and we need totransition away from that system
.
And the the way that we can dothat.
Individuals can't make thathappen right like through their
own daily actions, but if wework together as groups to make
sure that our leaders, ourpolitical leaders, are focused
on that, then they can changethe system Right.
(17:20):
So the number one thing thatanybody can do to help with the
climate problem is to educateyourself about which politicians
are Serious about confrontingclimate change, in which
politicians are not seriousabout it, and then vote for
those people who are serious.
And just to give you an exampleof it, you know we had a the
most landmark, consequential,largest Climate change
(17:42):
legislation ever that ourcountry passed was just passed
in 2021 and that's the inflationreduction act.
It put hundreds of billions ofdollars towards enhancing solar
energy production and alsoimplementation wind energy,
geothermal energy all of thesethings that we need to be
transitioning to to get off offossil fuels.
We now have a lot more moneyavailable from the federal
(18:03):
government to make it easier tomake that transition, so voting
is the number one thing thatpeople can do To help the
situation.
The second most important thingis to talk to other people about
what's going on.
We don't really talk aboutclimate change enough as an
issue.
We need to be talking to ourfriends and our family about
what's going on, because a lotof people just don't have the
information.
They don't understand reallywhat's going on or they feel
(18:25):
like they are ignorant aboutwhat's going on and so they
don't want to, sort of like,stake out a viewpoint on it.
Right, but the more we can talkabout it publicly, the more
people will feel comfortablethinking about it and trying to
take action on it.
And then the last thing isindividual choices.
There are hundreds ofindividual choices we can make
(18:47):
in our daily lives that canbenefit the environment and
benefit the climate changesituation, and I'll just mention
the most important ones.
Eating less meat is important,especially eating less red meat.
The reason for that is thatcows and the cattle industry are
shockingly big contributors tocarbon dioxide emissions, for a
(19:08):
variety of reasons that I won'tget into.
That's a big one.
And then the other one is moreobvious and it's driving less
right Living in a neighborhoodthat you can walk to places or
take public transportation.
That goes a long way towardsreducing our own personal
responsibility for greenhousegas emissions.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, I think it's so important to understand the
different options that you havein order to reduce your own
personal carbon footprint,because reality is you're not
going to be able to do all ofthem.
You might be living in aneighborhood that really just
isn't walkable, but maybe I cando something else that makes a
difference.
So there's not one specificprescription.
That's right for everybody.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, and Jacksonville is a great example
of that, because I would love todrive less, but I live in
Jacksonville and Jacksonville isa driving city.
It's a driving culture.
That's how it's been built forthe past 100 years.
Right, and it's not any of ourfault.
That's just the way that it'shappened over time and hopefully
that's going to change in thefuture to a more public
transportation-dominated city,but that's going to take decades
(20:06):
to put that into practice.
So the other thing I alwaysremind people of is don't get
angry at yourself and don't beatyourself up about not being
able to make every singlelifestyle change that you would
like to make, because sometimesit's just not possible.
So the driving thing for meisn't something that I can
really do at the moment, basedon where I live or my kids go to
school or I work.
It's just not something I canreally decrease, unfortunately.
(20:28):
But what I can do, and what Ihave done, is I've changed my
diet so that I'm not eating asmuch meat.
I do composting in my backyardso that my vegetable and fruit
scraps aren't ending up inlandfills and creating methane
emissions.
There's a lot of differentlittle things that we can all do
and you have to pick and choosethe ones that are right for you
at this current time.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
You mentioned the importance of talking about
climate change.
I've lived in several otherparts of the country.
I know you have to.
I have found it easier to haveclimate change discussions in
other parts of the countryversus in Jacksonville.
One of the things that enabledme to start having those
conversations more was some datathat I learned from you, which
(21:07):
was what the general publicactually thinks about climate
change.
How many people actually areconcerned about it.
Can you talk about that?
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, the majority of the country is concerned about
climate change.
It didn't used to be that way.
This is data that comes fromYale University.
They have an entire institutethat tracks public opinion about
climate change.
They've been doing it for manyyears.
They break it down on a zipcode by zip code basis.
(21:36):
You can really get granulardata on this.
But the majority of the countrythe majority of people in the
country are concerned aboutclimate change, recognize it as
a threat.
The thing that's interesting isthat people recognize it as a
threat, but a less than amajority of the country views it
as a personal threat to them.
The majority of people inFlorida do think that it is
(21:58):
impacting them, and that makessense, because Florida is a
place where we get affected byhurricanes and we get affected
by flooding more than maybe someother parts of the country.
The majority of people inFlorida understand that we are
being impacted right now byclimate change, but not the
majority of the country feelsthat same way.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
That's interesting.
I didn't know that aboutFlorida.
I didn't realize that Mostpeople in Florida actually
believe it's affecting them.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
The place that's true of is Florida, and Louisiana
has that as well because of allthe hurricane they've faced over
the years.
I believe California because ofthe wildfire situation.
I'm hopeful that thatconversation is becoming easier
to have.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It does feel like it's rapidly changing.
I do notice a differencebetween now and even just one or
two years.
Like you said, adam, have younoticed a difference in
perception based on generation,I guess?
I'm asking either if you areaware of any data that says that
, or even anecdotally, whatstudents that you interact with
that you and F?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, both of those things I mean there's definitely
anecdotally.
I teach college students everysingle day and we have, you know
, all of my classes.
We talk about climate changebecause it's impacting
ecological systems, which iswhat I'm a professor of, and the
conversations that we have arethat students are concerned
about it, they understand thethreat.
And then I asked them well, areyou having conversations with
(23:14):
you know, your friends and yourfamily about these issues?
Because I talked to them abouthow talking about it is more is
important, and they say yeah, alot of them say yeah, I, you
know, I've talked about thiswith my parents before, but my
parents kind of laugh it off andsay that it's not something
they really want to think aboutor be worried about and they're
not even sure that it's realright.
So there's definitely, justfrom an anecdotal standpoint,
(23:36):
there's definitely agenerational divide there and
the data bear that out as well.
I should say.
I mean, beyond my just personalanecdotal experience, there is
data that shows that the youngergenerations of voters in this
country are much more concernedabout climate change.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Thank you very much, Adam.
I appreciate your time.
This has been a greatconversation.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Lorian All right.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
We hope you enjoyed today's episode.
If you're interested in seeinghow your neighborhood fared in
the heat mapping study, you cancheck out the show notes on your
favorite podcast platform or onour website,
sustainablenorthfloridacom.
We also have links to thedatabase that shows perceptions
on climate change at the countylevel.
Thanks again to Dr AdamRosenblatt for sharing his
expertise with us today, andwe'll leave you with one good
(24:21):
thing.
On Friday, february 9th, cleanAir Northeast Florida is
releasing the firstcomprehensive greenhouse gas
inventory for our region.
This is a good thing, becauseunderstanding where our
greenhouse gas emissions comefrom is the first step in
abating those emissions andmoving towards a more
sustainable economy.
Welcome to Sustainable North Florida.
I'm your host, LorianneSantamaria.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The great thing is that there's tons of solutions
to these heat issues.
Right, there's a lot of optionsout there for how we can tackle
this.
We just have to decide to do itand we have to put the money in
place to fund these kinds ofprojects, and luckily, the city
is starting to do that.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
With the beautiful weather we've been having
recently, it might be hard toremember, but record-breaking
heat in the summer has becomethe new normal, and urban areas
are the front lines.
In order to adjust, we need todevelop new strategies to beat
the heat when it's at its worst.
Our guest today is Dr AdamRosenblatt.
He was one of the leaders of anurban heat study that was
conducted in Jacksonville tounderstand which parts of the
(00:45):
city are the most vulnerable.
This information is being usedto guide future urban planning
decisions.
We also covered the basics ofclimate change.
Adam's a great communicator andI think he does a pretty good
job of explaining the science ina way that's easy to understand
but also very pragmatic.
Even if you're already familiarwith the science of climate
change, it's worth a listen.
You might pick up a few ideasthat will help you in your own
(01:07):
climate conversations withfriends and family.
Here's my discussion with DrAdam Rosenblatt.
Welcome, adam.
Looking forward to thisconversation, we've asked you to
join us on the show to helpshed light on a topic that I
think anyone who was inJacksonville this past summer
will understand, and that's therecord-breaking heat that we
experienced.
But before we get into that,can you just introduce yourself
(01:28):
at a high level to the audienceand let them know who you are
and what you do.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, I'm an assistant professor of biology
at the University of NorthFlorida here in Jacksonville and
I do research on the effects ofclimate change on plants and
animals and the ecosystems thatwe rely on.
But I also have a long historyof advocacy and activism when it
comes to climate changelegislation and education and
(01:54):
outreach, trying to get peopleto understand what's going on
and why we need to be concernedabout the climate crisis.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Great.
Can you tell us about whatdrove you in this direction?
Is it the way that you grew up?
Is it something that youlearned later on in life?
What led you down this path?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, the first time I was sort of exposed to the
idea of climate change was bychance really.
I mean, I wasn't seeking it outor anything.
I did this summer program whenI was in high school at
Villanova University and as partof the summer program we were
put into groups and we had tochoose sort of a project to do,
(02:30):
and it just so happened thatthat summer was when there was a
lot of conversation going onabout the Kyoto Protocol, which
was one of the early attempts atan international agreement
around climate change, and thatis really what sparked my
interest in it.
And you know, this was likewhat.
This was 2001 or somethingright.
(02:50):
So climate change wasn't as bigof a talking point in the media
as it is today.
I mean, I'm sure I've heardabout it, but I don't think I'd
really spent a lot of timethinking about it until that
summer.
But that was the thing thatfirst got me interested in it.
And then, of course, Icontinued learning about it in
college, my first scientificresearch thinking about animal
(03:11):
behavior and how animals areresponding to changes in the
environment.
So it all kind of built fromthere.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Okay, so before we get into urban heat, which will
be our main topic today, can yougive us a little bit of a
background on global warming ingeneral and why temperatures are
rising?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, so temperatures are rising because of
greenhouse gas emissions, whichcome from burning fossil fuel.
They come from land use change,like cutting down forests for
agriculture or to build housingdevelopments, but the main thing
is burning fossil fuels andthat releases carbon dioxide, it
releases methane, it releasesnitrous oxides, and all of those
(03:48):
different gases help trap heaton the planet, with carbon
dioxide being the biggestcontributor.
The way that I like to talkabout it for people who aren't
as familiar with the concept isthe reason that the earth is
warm at all is because we havethis blanket of greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere that helptrap heat, and that's a good
thing.
But what we're doing is we areadding too much greenhouse gases
(04:11):
to the atmosphere too quicklyand that is increasing the
thickness of the blanket Right,and so it's just trapping a lot
more heat than what otherwisehave been trapped.
And the number that I tell topeople that's always shocking is
the amount of extra energy heatenergy that's been trapped on
(04:32):
the planet since 1971.
Because of greenhouse gasemissions is about 381 zeta
joules of energy, which Irealize is not anything that
anybody would understand,because nobody knows what a zeta
joule is, but if you convertthat into something more
tangible.
It's the equivalent of fourHiroshima sized nuclear bombs
(04:57):
exploding every second of everyday since 1971.
And the amount of heat that'sreleased from a nuclear
explosion.
You multiply that by four andthat's how much extra heat has
been trapped on the planet.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Every day.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, every second of every day since 1971.
It's a shocking number.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Can we dig a little bit further into urban heat and
why cities themselves are maybehotter than their surroundings?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, so global warming is causing temperatures
to rise all across the globe.
But what has been noticed for along time now this isn't sort
of new revelation is that citiesall around the globe they are
getting hotter faster than moralareas, and that is because of
something called the urban heatisland effect, where the types
(05:44):
of materials that we use tobuild cities and build the
infrastructure for cities, theyare actually very good at
trapping heat.
So asphalt right, asphalt isreally good at trapping heat
from the sun and then itre-radiates that heat out into
the air all day and night aswell.
The nights are actually gettingwarmer faster than the daytime
(06:05):
is.
You know the types of buildingsthat we build.
How tall are they?
How close are they together?
How much tree coverage do youhave in like a downtown area?
All of these decisions that aremade in terms of how we build
cities, they contribute to howbad the urban heat island effect
can get in a given place.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
So you were recently involved in a heat mapping study
that was conducted.
Can you tell us more about thatand the genesis of it and why a
heat mapping study is importantat all?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, the federal government, through the National
Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration.
They've had a program, I think,for maybe six or seven years
now, where they've been givingmoney to different cities around
the country to try and maptheir heat in their city and
which neighborhoods are hot,which neighborhoods are a little
bit cooler, why that's the case, and then just basically
(06:53):
helping cities gather data thatthey can use to reduce the
threat of extreme heat in theircities, and so I was the leader
of the Jacksonville version ofthis.
We applied for funding at theend of 2021, and then we got the
funding and part of the fundingcame from the city as well that
we carried out the study in thesummer of 2022, in June.
(07:15):
We chose a day that we knew wasgoing to be quite hot it was
June 18th and what we did was wesent out volunteers in their
cars across the city, acrossabout 400 square miles of the
city, so about half of the city,and those volunteers mounted
these temperature sensors on thesides of their cars and the
(07:36):
temperature sensors recorded thetemperature, they recorded the
humidity and they recorded thewind speed every second that
they were operational, and thesevolunteers would drive their
cars on specific routes throughdifferent neighborhoods.
We have this data on a block byblock basis.
Now for Jacksonville, which isreally powerful for planning
purposes.
What we found is that the partsof the city that have less tree
(07:59):
coverage, that have moreasphalt, more commercial land,
more industrial land and morebig roadways like highways,
those parts of the city are muchhotter than neighborhoods that
are more residential and havemore tree coverage and less
space dedicated to parking lots.
So, like the hottest part ofthe city, one of the hottest
(08:20):
parts of the city was downtown,right around City Hall, which
shouldn't really be a surpriseto anybody whereas cooler parts
of the city were further south,on the south side, in San Marco
and in San Jose, and getting outtoward the beaches a little bit
.
But there were pockets of heatin various places around the
city.
And just to give you a sense ofthe temperature differential,
(08:42):
the minimum temperature that wewere recording was about 95
degrees on that day and themaximum temperature was about
116.
So that shows what a differencethe urban heat island effect
can make.
That's a 20 degree Fahrenheitdifference in temperature, which
can be the difference betweenlife and death during the middle
(09:03):
of an extreme heat wave.
The reason we wanted to collectthis data and give the city more
of an insight into whichneighborhoods are facing extreme
heat risk is because it's ahuge public health disaster
waiting to happen.
Heat is already the number onecause of death for people
attributable to weather events.
A lot of people might thinkthat more people die during
(09:24):
hurricanes or die duringtornadoes or a flood or whatever
it might be, but actually thenumber one killer of people is
heat, and so if we have theseparts of the city that are
extremely hot, it's going tocontribute to people's heat
stress, it can lead to heatstroke, it can lead to emergency
room visits and it can lead todeath, tragically.
So our goal in collecting someof this data was to give the
(09:48):
city the information that itneeded to hopefully make changes
.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Given that now we have this data of what parts of
the city are more affected byheat than others, or more prone
to do these higher heat levelsthan others, what are the things
that we can do with urbandesign?
I guess I'd like to understandboth a technical perspective
which you talked to a little bit, some of those things but then
also from a policy perspective,what are the things that we can
try to push our city councilmembers or our mayor's office
(10:14):
towards doing in order toimprove the situation going
forward?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
The great thing is that there's tons of solutions
to these heat issues.
Right, there's a lot of optionsout there for how we can tackle
this.
We just have to decide to do itand we have to put the money in
place to fund these kinds ofprojects.
And luckily the city isstarting to do that.
But so on the technical side ofthings, the one that people
point to most often, is plantingtrees.
Planting more trees, it's goingto provide more shade and it's
(10:39):
also going to help cool the air,because trees naturally cool
the air throughevapotranspiration, which is the
fancy word for them, pullingwater out of the ground and then
allowing it to release throughtheir leaves.
But a key point on that, youknow, people think, ok, we have
to plant trees and so let's justplant as many trees as we can.
It's a little more complicatedthan that, because you have to
plant the right trees in theright places, right, like here
(11:01):
in Jacksonville, you know, fordecades there's been a push to
plant lots of palm trees becausethey look nice, they, you know,
give kind of an exotic feel tothe city and they're easy to
maintain, relatively speaking.
But palm trees provide almostno shade.
They provide almost no coolingeffect through
(11:22):
evapotranspiration.
They are pretty useless in thatregard.
So, you know, it's not likeplanting a bunch of palm trees
is going to help.
We need bigger you know broadercanopy trees, oaks, maples, you
know things that are going toprovide more shade coverage, and
so we need those kinds of treesand we need them to be
maintained properly.
They have to be cared for, atleast specifically while they're
(11:44):
young saplings, and they needthe right amount of water and
they need the right amount ofspace.
So you have to do it in aspecific way to have the biggest
success from that.
Beyond tree planting, there's abunch of things we can do in
terms of landscape design acrossthe city.
There are rain gardens, thereare bioswales.
These are ways that you canspecifically landscape a part of
(12:07):
the city so that they help totrap more rainwater, rainwater
and stormwater and they act assort of wetlands, right, and
wetlands are very good atcooling down the surrounding
environment because there's, youknow, a bunch of standing water
there.
So that's on the technical sideof things, on the policy side
of things that you werementioning the big push there,
(12:30):
and it's not like a sexy thingto talk about, right, like it's
not like something people reallylike to focus on because it is
kind of nitty gritty down in theweeds work.
But we need to update land useregulations.
We need to update zoningregulations in the city, for
example St John's Town Center.
When the developers built StJohn's Town Center, I'm
(12:51):
imagining because I'm not anexpert on the zoning regulations
that were in place at the time,but I'm imagining that there
was no real requirement that thedevelopers have a certain
percentage of town centerdedicated to green space.
So updating zoning regulationsto say, hey, if you're going to
do a housing subdivision, ifyou're going to do another place
like a St John's Town Centersomewhere in Northeast Florida,
(13:14):
you have to have a certainamount of land dedicated to tree
coverage, dedicated to parks,dedicated to green space, like
that has to be required, right,and that would force developers
to make more urban heat friendlydecisions.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I'd like to pivot from talking about design and
what we can do to minimize urbanheat in the future to talking
about population health, and sowe have to live with this for a
certain period of time.
So what are the things that wecan do in order to protect our
population, especially given thefact that there is such a big
difference between certainneighborhoods in the heat that
they're going to experience?
(13:50):
It seems to me, from looking atthe map, that those
neighborhoods that have a higherexposure to heat are also
potentially more vulnerable.
Can you explain that a littlebit?
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, you're exactly right.
The city needs to put moreresources in towards and into
helping people Deal with thecurrent amount of heat and also
the future heat that the city isgoing to be experiencing.
We obviously want to be puttingfunding towards ameliorating
the heat through all of thegreen infrastructure things I
was just mentioning, but at thesame time, there has to be
funding for helping people todeal with the here and now
(14:19):
threats that they're facing, andheat that's certainly one of
them.
So there's kind of two aspectsto this.
There's an education aspect andthen there's an infrastructure
aspect.
The education aspect is justeducating people across the city
about Heat threats.
Most people don't think aboutHeat as something they need to
be worried about, especially inFlorida, because everybody knows
(14:39):
that Florida is a hot placeright, it's always been a hot
place but people frequentlydon't realize how dangerous
Extreme heat can be and howquickly it can lead to really
bad tragedies.
The city actually has a systemof putting out these heat alerts
.
There's a free service thatpeople can sign up for, and if
you sign up for it, you gettexts to your phone.
The city will send out, youknow, alerts that say hey, today
(15:01):
is an extreme heat day, pleasetake the necessary precautions.
So we need to get more peoplesigned up for services like that
so they're aware of which daysare the most threatening to them
.
And then we need to educatepeople about how to keep
themselves safe during theseevents, which means finding
places that have reliable airconditioning, drinking lots of
water, not working or playingSports or spending a lot of time
(15:22):
outside for long periods oftime on these days, maybe going
to a public pool or going to asplash pad with your kids or
something to help everybody cooloff.
So there's there's aneducational aspect to it.
And then the infrastructureaspect is making sure that all
the things I just mentioned areavailable in the Neighborhoods
that need it most.
Right, we saw at this pastsummer Anybody who was paying
attention to the news.
(15:43):
You know the city has a systemof public pools, but about half
of the public pools were not anoperation because they needed
repairs and the city had notdedicated enough funding in past
years to repair these pools sothat they were functional.
And so we were in the middle ofthis massive heat wave and
there were certain neighborhoodsthat didn't have access to a
public pool that should havebeen available.
(16:03):
So that's the kind ofinfrastructure that that I'm
talking about.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Thanks for listening.
If you're enjoying the episodeso far, please share the podcast
with your friends andcolleagues or, better yet,
subscribe on your favoritepodcast platform.
Those are the best ways tosupport our efforts to highlight
local sustainability stories.
And now back to the show.
I think we've covered urbanheat pretty well.
I'd like to zoom back out nowand Talk about carbon dioxide
(16:29):
levels in general.
So if CO2 levels in ouratmosphere are the main cause of
rising temperatures, what arethe things that we can be doing
to address it?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
There's a lot of things that we can do to address
it, but the thing that wereally need is we need to change
the system that we are allliving within, right, the
economic system that we havebuilt as a global human society
over the past 250 years is asystem that is dependent on
(16:58):
fossil fuels, and we need totransition away from that system
.
And the the way that we can dothat.
Individuals can't make thathappen right like through their
own daily actions, but if wework together as groups to make
sure that our leaders, ourpolitical leaders, are focused
on that, then they can changethe system Right.
(17:20):
So the number one thing thatanybody can do to help with the
climate problem is to educateyourself about which politicians
are Serious about confrontingclimate change, in which
politicians are not seriousabout it, and then vote for
those people who are serious.
And just to give you an exampleof it, you know we had a the
most landmark, consequential,largest Climate change
(17:42):
legislation ever that ourcountry passed was just passed
in 2021 and that's the inflationreduction act.
It put hundreds of billions ofdollars towards enhancing solar
energy production and alsoimplementation wind energy,
geothermal energy all of thesethings that we need to be
transitioning to to get off offossil fuels.
We now have a lot more moneyavailable from the federal
(18:03):
government to make it easier tomake that transition, so voting
is the number one thing thatpeople can do To help the
situation.
The second most important thingis to talk to other people about
what's going on.
We don't really talk aboutclimate change enough as an
issue.
We need to be talking to ourfriends and our family about
what's going on, because a lotof people just don't have the
information.
They don't understand reallywhat's going on or they feel
(18:25):
like they are ignorant aboutwhat's going on and so they
don't want to, sort of like,stake out a viewpoint on it.
Right, but the more we can talkabout it publicly, the more
people will feel comfortablethinking about it and trying to
take action on it.
And then the last thing isindividual choices.
There are hundreds ofindividual choices we can make
(18:47):
in our daily lives that canbenefit the environment and
benefit the climate changesituation, and I'll just mention
the most important ones.
Eating less meat is important,especially eating less red meat.
The reason for that is thatcows and the cattle industry are
shockingly big contributors tocarbon dioxide emissions, for a
(19:08):
variety of reasons that I won'tget into.
That's a big one.
And then the other one is moreobvious and it's driving less
right Living in a neighborhoodthat you can walk to places or
take public transportation.
That goes a long way towardsreducing our own personal
responsibility for greenhousegas emissions.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, I think it's so important to understand the
different options that you havein order to reduce your own
personal carbon footprint,because reality is you're not
going to be able to do all ofthem.
You might be living in aneighborhood that really just
isn't walkable, but maybe I cando something else that makes a
difference.
So there's not one specificprescription.
That's right for everybody.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, and Jacksonville is a great example
of that, because I would love todrive less, but I live in
Jacksonville and Jacksonville isa driving city.
It's a driving culture.
That's how it's been built forthe past 100 years.
Right, and it's not any of ourfault.
That's just the way that it'shappened over time and hopefully
that's going to change in thefuture to a more public
transportation-dominated city,but that's going to take decades
(20:06):
to put that into practice.
So the other thing I alwaysremind people of is don't get
angry at yourself and don't beatyourself up about not being
able to make every singlelifestyle change that you would
like to make, because sometimesit's just not possible.
So the driving thing for meisn't something that I can
really do at the moment, basedon where I live or my kids go to
school or I work.
It's just not something I canreally decrease, unfortunately.
(20:28):
But what I can do, and what Ihave done, is I've changed my
diet so that I'm not eating asmuch meat.
I do composting in my backyardso that my vegetable and fruit
scraps aren't ending up inlandfills and creating methane
emissions.
There's a lot of differentlittle things that we can all do
and you have to pick and choosethe ones that are right for you
at this current time.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
You mentioned the importance of talking about
climate change.
I've lived in several otherparts of the country.
I know you have to.
I have found it easier to haveclimate change discussions in
other parts of the countryversus in Jacksonville.
One of the things that enabledme to start having those
conversations more was some datathat I learned from you, which
(21:07):
was what the general publicactually thinks about climate
change.
How many people actually areconcerned about it.
Can you talk about that?
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, the majority of the country is concerned about
climate change.
It didn't used to be that way.
This is data that comes fromYale University.
They have an entire institutethat tracks public opinion about
climate change.
They've been doing it for manyyears.
They break it down on a zipcode by zip code basis.
(21:36):
You can really get granulardata on this.
But the majority of the countrythe majority of people in the
country are concerned aboutclimate change, recognize it as
a threat.
The thing that's interesting isthat people recognize it as a
threat, but a less than amajority of the country views it
as a personal threat to them.
The majority of people inFlorida do think that it is
(21:58):
impacting them, and that makessense, because Florida is a
place where we get affected byhurricanes and we get affected
by flooding more than maybe someother parts of the country.
The majority of people inFlorida understand that we are
being impacted right now byclimate change, but not the
majority of the country feelsthat same way.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
That's interesting.
I didn't know that aboutFlorida.
I didn't realize that Mostpeople in Florida actually
believe it's affecting them.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
The place that's true of is Florida, and Louisiana
has that as well because of allthe hurricane they've faced over
the years.
I believe California because ofthe wildfire situation.
I'm hopeful that thatconversation is becoming easier
to have.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It does feel like it's rapidly changing.
I do notice a differencebetween now and even just one or
two years.
Like you said, adam, have younoticed a difference in
perception based on generation,I guess?
I'm asking either if you areaware of any data that says that
, or even anecdotally, whatstudents that you interact with
that you and F?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, both of those things I mean there's definitely
anecdotally.
I teach college students everysingle day and we have, you know
, all of my classes.
We talk about climate changebecause it's impacting
ecological systems, which iswhat I'm a professor of, and the
conversations that we have arethat students are concerned
about it, they understand thethreat.
And then I asked them well, areyou having conversations with
(23:14):
you know, your friends and yourfamily about these issues?
Because I talked to them abouthow talking about it is more is
important, and they say yeah, alot of them say yeah, I, you
know, I've talked about thiswith my parents before, but my
parents kind of laugh it off andsay that it's not something
they really want to think aboutor be worried about and they're
not even sure that it's realright.
So there's definitely, justfrom an anecdotal standpoint,
(23:36):
there's definitely agenerational divide there and
the data bear that out as well.
I should say.
I mean, beyond my just personalanecdotal experience, there is
data that shows that the youngergenerations of voters in this
country are much more concernedabout climate change.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Thank you very much, Adam.
I appreciate your time.
This has been a greatconversation.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Lorian All right.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
We hope you enjoyed today's episode.
If you're interested in seeinghow your neighborhood fared in
the heat mapping study, you cancheck out the show notes on your
favorite podcast platform or onour website,
sustainablenorthfloridacom.
We also have links to thedatabase that shows perceptions
on climate change at the countylevel.
Thanks again to Dr AdamRosenblatt for sharing his
expertise with us today, andwe'll leave you with one good
(24:21):
thing.
On Friday, february 9th, cleanAir Northeast Florida is
releasing the firstcomprehensive greenhouse gas
inventory for our region.
This is a good thing, becauseunderstanding where our
greenhouse gas emissions comefrom is the first step in
abating those emissions andmoving towards a more
sustainable economy.
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