Reading that the forecast calls for 90 degrees is one thing.
Standing in Newark at midday on a summer Tuesday is another — sun beaming down, a heat advisory pinging on your phone (which keeps overheating), sweat dripping down your forehead so much that wiping it away with a towel provides only seconds of relief.
Brick City residents live in a place that new climate findings say will not only suffer from hotter days — worsened by human-caused climate change — but will be at the epicenter of the worst heat effects nationwide.
As Newark officials warned the local heat index would soon surpass 100 degrees and call for cooling centers to open, a 61-year-old home contractor named Calvin Hendricks paused outside a bodega on South 19th Street.
“Doing this, taking breaks,” Hendricks explained of his regimen to deal with blazing hot days in his hometown. “I drink water to deal with it, and juice — I especially drink juice.”
Sometimes the answer is doing nothing. Although Hendricks once worked outside as a garbage collector, today he strictly provides his home landscape and painting services for indoor jobs. He was headed to one such gig on Tuesday — but especially hot days means he won’t work at all.
“It’s the low-income people, communities ... that suffer the most,” he said of extreme heat in Newark.
New research findings illustrate just how right Hendricks is and how much heat that will be.
Newark is among 12 cities in the U.S. where “more than eight out of every 10 people experience at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit more heat due to the ‘urban heat island effect,’” nonprofit Climate Central said in new temperature data findings released Wednesday.
Newark’s also a diverse city, with a mostly Black population, and already surrounded by a bevy of emissions from a variety of sources.
“Urban heat islands (UHI) are areas — typically a city or suburban setting — that experience higher temperatures than outlying areas do,” Shel Winkley, a meteorologist with Climate Central, told NJ Advance Media.
Specifically, 97% of Newark’s population — or 302,784 people — feel an urban heat island index of 8 degrees or higher, the group found.
“Buildings, roads, sidewalks, concrete covering areas that used to be vegetative absorb and release the sun’s heat more than green areas,” Winkley explained. “This can result in as high as an 8° to 11° temperature difference.”
Climate Central noted last week that New Jersey was the third-fastest warming state in the country. The warming ocean along the Garden State’s coast and increased development in parts of the state contribute to that rapid pace, experts shared.
Despite average annual temperatures in the U.S. increasing by about 2.5 degrees since 1970, New Jersey’s annual temps have gone up by about 3.5 degrees, the nonprofit found in its analysis.
How do we know global warming is a factor?
While the state feels the effects of El Niño — a weather pattern that does help raise temps — and natural weather variations, Winkley said the evidence is clear burning fossil fuels is having adverse effects here.
“The largest reason that we’ve seen these increases in temperature being the fact that we have polluted our atmosphere with things like carbon pollution — so burning of coal and oil and natural gas,” Winkley said. “We know that because compared to the pre-industrial time, we’ve added 50% more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (and) 160% more methane ... and we know that both of those are heat trapping gases that are now in our atmosphere.”
The urban heat island effect impacts communities nationwide — and notably Newark, NJ, where about 119,000 people feel 9 degrees hotter than others due to the makeup of the city, according to nonprofit Climate Central.Graphic courtesy of Climate Central
Mosquitos, trees and heat waves
Winkley, the meteorologist from Climate Central, said other New Jersey cities that bear the brunt of the urban heat island effect include:
- Camden (UHI between +6.5° to +9.5°F)
- Willingboro Township (UHI +7.3° to +8.1°)
- Bridgeport (UHI +7.2°)
- Atlantic City (UHI +7.7° to +9.8°)
- Marmora (UHI +11°)
- Brigantine (UHI +11.5°)
- Trenton (UHI: +8° to +9.2°)
- Princeton: (UHI: +6.3° to +8°)
“Urban heat islands already expose residents to disproportionate heat risks and cooling costs, which will only climb as long as carbon pollution drives up global temperatures,” Jennifer Brady, Climate Central’s senior data analyst, said in a statement Wednesday morning. “Until cities take action to cool these areas, people who live there will face the worst impacts of climate change.”
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection — on its new online hub that provides resources for vulnerable residents to deal with extreme heat — pointed to additional figures from the US Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey.
The survey noted how roughly 9% of U.S. households lack air conditioning, and nearly 12% of those homes fall below the poverty threshold.
“Adding to those that lack of air conditioning,” the NJDEP said, “lower socio-economic populations sometimes choose not to operate their air conditioning units due to rising energy costs.”
Other findings from Climate Central’s new urban heat island report included:
- Across 65 cities analyzed, the total population living in census block groups with a UHI index of 8 degrees F or higher is nearly 34 million
- The country’s hottest neighborhoods also include Fort Myers in Florida, New York City, New York, and San Antonio, Texas
- The urban heat burden is “unequally shared, and linked to a history of racially biased housing policy,” Climate Central said. The nonprofit referred to other analysis done by Columbia University which showed that historically redlined areas currently experience hotter summers than non-redlined areas in 150 of 179 major U.S. cities
In addition to simply feeling hotter for more days, less snowy winters and enduring summers that start sooner, Winkley of Climate Central, said New Jersey is in store for other impacts from the heat.
Warmer ocean water, seen to fuel hurricanes, will make storms more potent. Heat waves, like the ones we’ve experienced this summer already, will be more common. And nighttime heat, which has already been seen to go up, could increase more too.
There will also be a “longer pest season,” Winkley said. For instance, Atlantic City today already sees 23 more days with mosquitos than it did in 1979.
Besides more resources for residents in need, Climate Central officials said planting trees and increasing vegetation are also key to culling the impacts of the urban heat island effect. As for addressing heat issues more widely, climate advocates continue to push for legislation to protect outdoor workers, as well as provide more resources and funds for those most in need.
Read more about Climate Central’s latest urban heat analysis here.
To learn about NJDEP resources to deal with the heat visit heat-hub-new-jersey-njdep.hub.arcgis.com/. More information and a list of New Jersey cooling centers is available at nj211.org/nj-cooling-centers.
“It’s the low-income people, communities ... that suffer the most,” 61-year-old Calvin Hendricks, said of the extreme heat people in Newark and elsewhere in New Jersey face.Steven Rodas | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
