‘I felt I was melting‘: Embodying climate change through urban heat

Research on climate change, dominated by biophysical and environmental sciences, is often presented through abstract models and numbers. As such, climate change is not easily seen, felt, smelled, tasted or heard. By taking a phenomenological approach, we suggest looking at the body – and not only the changing temperature degrees or other environmental factors – as an important locus of climate change.

Our empirical case is increasing urban heat, one of the most pronounced consequences of climate change. This article stems from mixed-methods research with older adults, a group especially vulnerable to heat stress, living in two European cities, Warsaw and Madrid. In the summers of 2021 – 2022, we conducted ethnographic research, including participant observation, group interviews, and participatory workshops, studying people’s daily experiences of urban heat and climate change. In 2022 we also conducted a representative thermosurvey among older adults living in those two cities.

To understand their embodied experiences of urban heat, we first discuss older adults’ somatic modes of attention to their bodies and minds, social relationships and surroundings, and second, we analyze their embodied perception of climate change and how it affects their being-in-the-world. We demonstrate that the framework of embodiment enables a new and different understanding of climate change, as it provides a subjective perspective from a ground up on how environmental shifts affect people’s lives. By focusing on older adults’ experiences of urban heat we demonstrate that climate change is not only a biophysical, environmental or geopolitical process, but that it is also a process of embodiment.