(intense music) - [Maiya] 2020 was hot. In fact, it was the hottest year since record keeping
began over a century ago, and climate models point
towards more warming and more records. That might seem nice if
you live in a cold place, but heat-related deaths
across the US are on the rise. We traveled to Phoenix, the
hottest city in America, to take a closer look at this problem. 2020 was also, by far, their hottest year with 53 days that reached
at least 110 degrees. And while Phoenix
highlights the grim reality of a warming world, it also exemplifies the hopeful potential of a community with no choice
but to create new solutions. (upbeat music) Phoenix has seen in an alarming uptick in heat related illness and death over the last five years. Stacy Champion has worked
with local government, aid organizations, and
houses people to change that. - At the beginning of April, the County decided to open up these two overflow parking lots and push the majority of the people in the tents into these
lots and people have died. We're gonna take Marty. We're gonna go measure the
temperature of these lots. - [Ariane] Marty is a garden cart that measures mean radiant temperature. And mean radiant temperature is essentially all the radiation that hits your body from all sides and it's the heat load
that your body experiences. It is very much different
from what you get from a thermometer which would tell you the air temperature,
because it incorporates the short wave radiation which is the, essentially
the direct sunlight that hits your body when
you're not in the shade and that adds a lot to your
heat load when you're outdoors. Mean radiant temperature
is important for us here in Phoenix because
it's the main stressor when you're outdoors in the heat. (upbeat music) - I can't hold it. (people chatting) It's like putting your hand on the stove. (tools clicking) - [Ariane] I can look that up. Mean radiant temperature is 56. - [Camera person] How does that
strike you knowing that we are right next to where some people sleep? - So I'm very much concerned about people who have to live here because
they don't have a home. - Over the last year, Robert
Ladoux lost his housing and has been forced to do just that. - No doubt about it. It could kill you. Heat kills. Nothing we can do it except get out of it, drink water, drink a lot of water. (feet crunching) So
here's my tent over here. It's kind of out in the middle. There is no shade out here. - [Stacy] So one of the misconceptions about heat illness and death is that this is only an unsheltered or homeless person problem. Heat can impact so many different people. There was a woman named Stephanie Pullman. She was in her 70's. She owed $51 on her bill. The cutoff for their
disconnect at the time was $50. So in essence, she owed $1 too much, was turned off on a day that
was 107 degrees and died. - During prolonged heat exposure, the human body can become dehydrated and lose its ability to sweat, which is how it cools itself. As our body temperature rises, proteins and membranes around cells, especially in the brain, begin to fail. Organs malfunction and heart
muscles begin to break down, and that can stress our body until it causes one or
more organs to fail, leading to illness or even death. Heat doesn't affect all of us the same. Age, overall health and even location are all factors that can play a big role. And remember, the definition of high temperatures
depends on where you live since our bodies adapt to
the climate we live in. While global warming is
the underlying driver behind why places like Phoenix
continue to get hotter, something called the
Urban Heat Island Effect is warming cities at a much faster rate than the global average or even the natural areas around them. - It's absolutely critical for Phoenix and other cities to be participating in the conversation around
global scale climate change, but also really important
to be thinking about local climate change. Urban driven warming has been more than double the effect
of global scale warming here on Phoenix thus far. There are three key ingredients for the Urban Heat Island. One, people have machines that emit heat into the environment. Two, people use different materials than the natural landscape like pavement, asphalt, cement and so on. And those materials
absorb and release heat in a different way than natural materials. And three, especially
in cities, the geometry of the buildings does a really good job of trapping heat and then
slowly re emitting it into the environment. - And we see this effect most obviously with temperatures overnight. It's when materials of the city slowly release the heat they
absorbed during daytime, back out into the environment, and the effect can be dramatic. (intense music) - [David] We're talking
about something like seven, eight, nine 10 degrees Fahrenheit of higher nighttime temperatures. When we look at our daytime temperatures, which are a mixture of this urban effect and the global effect, we only see an increase of
a few degrees Fahrenheit. So urbanization has
been the dominant driver of climate change here in Phoenix and in many other cities. - In August of 2003, the largest blackout in North American history
left 50 million people in the Northeast without power for days. With Phoenix's record-breaking 53 days over 110 degrees this summer, it's not hard to imagine a blackout that can become truly catastrophic, and Arizona State Professor
Mike Chester worries that a larger, more
deadly Katrina- like event is looming on the horizon if cities across the country like Phoenix don't address their infrastructure
vulnerabilities quickly. - When temperatures go up, people crank their AC down, colder, which puts more strain on the grid. And when the temperature is hotter, hardware breaks more frequently. So aspects of all infrastructure
fail more frequently. It's not for me a question
of if it'll happen. It's a question of when the next large-scale
outage will happen. If you have a large scale blackout, we're going to see excess mortality. It's probably going to be somewhere on the order of hundreds or
thousands of additional deaths. - But there's a lot we
can do to prevent heat related tragedies, and some
of it is pretty simple, like increasing shade and decreasing heat absorbing materials' exposure to the sun. (intense music) - We have a church here and,
that has a huge parking lot and currently there's not even
a single car standing here. We have a mean radiant temperature of 150. And that's a common issue in cities that they have a lot
of impervious surfaces, impervious means they're
not penetrable by water. And they heat up a lot in the day and they give the heat back overnight. And it makes a huge difference whether you have a parking lot or whether you actually place lawns, native nature, that cool the area. - And it's not just lawns. Well maintained public
parks and green spaces help cool the areas around them, but access to these spaces
is not equally distributed. Across the country, lack of investment in low-income neighborhoods
has left them hotter than their wealthier counterparts. With fewer shaded public parts, getting out of the heat in a blackout is even more difficult. - There are a lot of studies that show that wealthier neighborhoods
are usually cooler than foreign neighborhoods, just because they have more vegetation, more lawns that are irrigated. And that just makes it
cooler in this environment. So here we have an air temperature of 40 degrees Celsius which is about 104 degrees Fahrenheit. So it's much cooler here in the shade with all the vegetation
in the surrounding. There's this push to plant more trees and provide more shade to help people in poorer neighborhoods. (intense music) - So we're here in a
residential neighborhood near downtown Phoenix where
some of this cool pavement has just been applied. The sun's been up for
only three hours, now. Let's see how different the temperature is of the surface between
traditional pavement here and this cooler pavement. So on the traditional pavement, we're looking at 125, 126 Fahrenheit. We'll come over to this cool
seal pavement, and it is 121. So the sun's been up for just three hours and already we're seeing
a four degree Fahrenheit difference in temperature
between these two surfaces. That's gonna grow over the day to be upwards of 15 degrees Fahrenheit by the time we get to sunset. - Black objects absorb all colors turning the light waves into heat while white objects reflect them, keeping them much cooler. - If we were to take an airplane and fly over Phoenix right now, we'd see many roofs that
are already painted white. Some folks in the private
sector have figured out that the math works. If you make your building cooler, you're gonna spend less
money on electricity. Let's get that, you know, let's make that initial investment. - [Maiya] There are
thousands of miles of roads in Phoenix and other cities
that could be treated with cool pavement surfacing, as well as countless roofs
that could be painted white. - So we're at Justice Center, and it's one of the better
places to get out of the heat. And they have huge, huge fans. Really thankful for places like this, because if it wasn't for them, we'd be out here sweltering in the heat. - It's 34.5 degrees Celsius,
which is just over 90, and it's 105 out there, so
it's much cooler in here. - This is literally a lifesaver. (intense music) - Nothing like water. - There's not been enough that
has been done proactively. I believe that the majority of heat deaths are preventable deaths. - We're trying to think of Phoenix as an innovation laboratory. The ideas for coping with extreme heat may very well come from
here out of necessity. We need to find the solutions
before other cities, as we head into a warmer future. - While scientists,
activists and officials strive to find solutions to living on an ever warming planet, remember to do what you can to stay safe during hot weather. First, stay hydrated
and get out of the sun whenever possible. But if you
do have to be out in the heat for whatever reason, make
sure to pay close attention to signs of heat
exhaustion, and heat stroke such as dizziness, confusion,
cramping, and fatigue. Heat related illness
can become very serious very quickly and may
need medical attention. So don't be afraid to ask
for help and to help others. People who are isolated are far more likely to be at risk. So when it's hot, check on the more vulnerable
people in your community. The world is getting warmer and we need to look out for each other. Thank you so much for watching. If you haven't yet, check out
our previous nine episodes for more info on natural disasters, how they're changing
and how you can prepare. Thanks again for watching,
see you guys next time. (intense music)
I lived in phoenix almost 30 years ago. It was a miserable place to live then.
This video was uploaded yesterday by PBS Terra. It does a fairly good job of explaining how heat will kill you, and gives a decent glimpse of the kind of future hundreds of millions of people will be facing, that is until they migrate en masse to your happy little countries.
Enjoy.
One thing about living in Phoenix is that it is a dry heat. We have almost no humidity during the hot seasons so its difficult to reach the wet bulb temperature. Mostly the deaths we have here are from dehydration. With water and shade you wont die. It still horrible and we all should leave.
"If I owned this place and Hell, I'd rent this place out, and live in Hell."
Toombs, Chronicles of Riddick
It’s 117 degrees in Phoenix this week in June.
And it usually gets hottest around August.
Mr Burns already invented the perfect fix, they just don’t want to listen
Bahahahaha
https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/arizona/phoenix-real-estate-market-2021-is-booming-but-is-it-a-bubble-that-will-burst/75-f099df53-6619-4d7a-8f7f-5492a427d8cf