Too hot to handle: Assessing practitioner climate service needs to advance heat resilience

Abstract

Extreme heat is deadly and it is disproportionately experienced by lower-income, minority, and marginalized community members. Heat practitioners are faced with the dual challenges of taking action to mitigate the level of heat experienced by local residents while preparing communities to manage unavoidable levels of elevated warming. In response to a lack of in-depth information about heat practitioner needs, this work aims to advance our understanding of how efforts to improve climate services may contribute to more effective extreme heat planning and decision-making in the United States. Through a two-round, mixed-methods approach that employed group interviews and a survey, we engaged with 144 heat practitioners from 40 states and Washington, DC. We found that the biggest barriers to extreme heat planning and implementation are a lack of perceived risk and a lack of internal staff capacity, and that practitioners would welcome additional heat related information and tools. The two practitioner “needs” that respondents considered to be most impactful are: regularly updated local-scale extreme heat data collection, and improved information about how extreme heat impacts different systems. We found significant differences in the perceived impactfulness of interventions based on whether a respondent was from a rural or urban area and also based on their level of educational attainment.

Practical implications

Climate-induced extreme heat is deadly and disproportionately impacts lower-income, minority, and marginalized community members. People working for local and regional governments are responsible for making decisions and implementing actions to reduce the impacts of extreme heat in their communities. Those tasked with that work are referred to here as heat practitioners. To understand their needs we conducted a series of interviews and a survey that engaged over 140 heat practitioners from 40 states and Washington, DC. In this paper we share our findings that bring an in-depth understanding of climate service needs specific to those working to protect people from extreme heat.

An important finding from our work is that climate services cannot be just about more information, there is a need for building adaptive capacity and support to overcome complex barriers. Specifically we see a clear need to address the silos heat practitioners find themselves in. Additionally, by elevating the importance of heat within communities practitioners will have an easier time working to manage and mitigate this threat.

We find a strong call for better information that is tailored to local contexts. Heat practitioners said that the most impactful thing that would benefit their work is updated local-scale extreme heat data collection and on-the-ground monitoring. Another highly localized data need was information about the relationship between urban design and extreme heat. We also heard that information should be about specific actions heat practitioners could take to address this threat. One specific example is the request for information about the relative effectiveness of nature-based solutions.

Heat practitioners also noted that translation of information was crucial for their work. They specifically note a need for translations that connect extreme heat to risk. For example heat practitioners consider a regionally specific heat index as potentially having a high level of impact which indicates the need for translation efforts. The need for translation is also made clear when we hear quotes like “Instead of giving me the data, show me what I can do with the data.”

Finally, we observed a need for climate services to be specific to the circumstances of different places. Respondents working in urban areas were more likely to indicate that additional information would be impactful to their work. This difference could be addressed by developing information that is more clearly tailored to and relevant for rural areas. Additionally, we observed different needs between those with postgraduate education and those with bachelor’s degrees or less. This education divide could be addressed by improved access to education as well as different types of information provided to each group. Heat practitioners were somewhat siloed into those that focus on mitigating heat and those that focus on management of heat. This could be addressed by both working to bridge these two groups and by developing services specific to each type of heat practitioner.