The Hidden Cost of Extreme Heat, From Cities to Cornfields

[Paul Yeager] Today's MtoM podcast is brought to you in part by the Iowa Economic Development Authority, creating opportunity for business in Iowa by connecting companies, entrepreneurs, and communities with the resources to thrive. Learn more at BusinessIowa.com.

[Paul Yeager] How hot is it? That's a question we ask often, and we live it every day. As I'm recording this, a massive heatwave is hitting a large part of the United States. It's not new — it's been around — but how we deal with it, whether on the farm, in town, or in a big city, is getting a fresh look, and there are new ideas for beating the heat. It might be as simple as a little shade. Today we talk with Dr. V. Kelly Turner, professor of heat planning at UCLA, who also has experience with NOAA on heat-resilient communities. We'll discuss how communities big and small are doing their part to beat the heat, being smart about it at all ages and in all locations. This is a fascinating interview for me because I love talking about weather. We'll cover all sorts of communities — she's also spent time in Arizona — and we'll talk about migration in the United States and how that plays into this discussion about heat. This is the MtoM podcast. I'm Paul Yeager. New episodes come out every Tuesday — subscribe, like, share. Topics are tied to the Market to Market TV show, produced at Iowa PBS. But this episode is all about the heat.

Kelly, it's fitting that we recorded this interview a couple of weeks ago, and it's ridiculously hot in the Midwest right now — we're already in a heat dome. Does it mean anything that it's September 1st and I'm dealing with incredible heat?

[V. Kelly Turner] First of all, thank you so much for having me. This summer has been exceptional — I think we're all sick of heat wave after heat wave. What we're seeing now is heat events that extend into fall and happen earlier in spring. I'm from LA, and we had an extreme heat event in February this year. It wasn't just hot for February — it was summer hot in February. That's concerning because it's changing the cultural seasons for us. Fall isn't really fall anymore if it feels like summll er.

[Paul Yeager] We talk about seasonality with commodities all the time on the TV show, and things have been thrown off for a number of years, but the weather has thrown us off too. I don't know how many times I've written that this was the hottest January, the hottest February, the hottest March — and those are winter months for us in corn- and grain-growing areas. Does that translate to what you're talking about with the heat you had in California in February?

[V. Kelly Turner] Absolutely. We see that folks in the agricultural sector are having to rethink things like growing and planting times, and even fertilization — the whole process is built around climate and weather. Nobody knows weather better than farmers. You could argue that most of our cultural institutions, like the school year, are built around agricultural seasons.

[Paul Yeager] I jumped ahead — I didn't even ask where you're from. What's home for you, Kelly? You said LA.

[V. Kelly Turner] Yeah, I live in Los Angeles, California.

[Paul Yeager] And is that where you're from?

[V. Kelly Turner] No, I grew up in New England — very different. I went to graduate school in Arizona, and that's where I got really fascinated by heat, because Phoenix is very, very hot.

[Paul Yeager] I've always thought of Phoenix as hot — Arizona is hot. How do people live with the heat and not go crazy?

[V. Kelly Turner] When I was in graduate school, they used to say Phoenix is what the world is going to be like. It wasn't just hubris — it's how the rest of the world is going to be. We can talk abstractly about how high the temperature is, but what really hits home for me is the experience of living in heat. I was a poor grad student at the time, and I had a car parked outside. We would keep gloves in the car because the steering wheel got so hot, and you'd have to take off any metal jewelry, watches, or earrings because they'd heat up immediately. At Halloween, I saw pumpkins rotting on people's doorsteps because it was too hot to have a jack-o'-lantern — I'd never seen that before. Those are mild inconveniences, but all the experiences of people who've been living with heat are what the rest of us are now confronting with summers like we've had.

[Paul Yeager] When we live in a large city, we understand certain parts of living there — air conditioning is a big part. Dealing with heat in urban areas is really your specialty. How are our cities evolving in dealing with heat since you started studying this field?

[V. Kelly Turner] The big thing right now is we're having an awakening that shade is the difference-maker for people outside. All things equal, if you're standing in the sun versus the shade, you can feel 20 to 40 degrees cooler in the shade just a few feet away. So if your community has shade, you're having a whole different experience than if it doesn't. Cities first had to recognize what we often call the urban heat island — all that concrete and asphalt makes cities appear hotter — but that's just the surface-level, satellite point of view. Down at street level, pedestrians feel how much sun is hitting their body, how much wind, how much humidity. Now we're in phase two, where cities are explaining, great, but you need awnings, buildings that cast shadow, and tree canopy.

[Paul Yeager] Or a natural shade tree — different from a canopy. We need vegetation at some point to provide natural shade.

[V. Kelly Turner] Shade trees provide all sorts of benefits beyond just shade. My team maps shade across 330 cities in the US — it's a free online resource through American Forests' Tree Equity Score. We measured shade at noon, 3 p.m., and 6 p.m., and what we learned is that cities with trees have more consistent shade throughout the day, because canopy casts shadow all day long, whereas building shade is basically nonexistent at noon. Cities like New York or Manhattan look like they don't have much shade at the beginning of the day, but later, when the sun angle is lower, they have a ton of shade — coming from buildings. That's different in rural communities and spread-out communities that don't have two- or three-story buildings close together. Rural communities don't get that building-shade bump later in the day.

[Paul Yeager] I watched one of your talks — I think a TEDx talk at UCLA — and early on you mentioned the deaths associated with heat. I remember as a kid hearing about Chicago or New York apartments where people died because they didn't have air conditioning. This isn't a new phenomenon in our lifetime. What has changed from when we were kids to now?

[V. Kelly Turner] We just have more hot days, but our infrastructure hasn't caught up. The Chicago event you're talking about was a mass casualty event — some people use that term for heat. Not a lot has changed in terms of infrastructure, air conditioning access, tree canopy. A lot of people are surprised to find out that heat kills more people than all other weather-related disasters combined, but it doesn't create the same kind of property damage. After a hurricane, it looks like a hurricane has been there. After an extreme heat event, you don't have that same visual impact. So it can be harder to make the case, both on a visual level and because property damage translates to dollars, and that's what a lot of our recovery systems are tied to. Making the case that heat is a crisis requires rethinking — it's not about how many buildings were knocked over, it's about how many people ended up in the ER.

[Paul Yeager] Can we build to protect against heat?

[V. Kelly Turner] It takes building and management — so yes, absolutely. The solutions to heat are here. We know they're here because some people already have them. Think about a family with air conditioning at home, an air-conditioned car, an air-conditioned office, tree-lined streets, and kids at schools with shade structures, canopies, and indoor cooling. Contrast that with a family that has none of that and is constantly outside. That's the difference — it's about access to resources, not whether the technology exists. That's why I say it's a management and governance problem — a problem of implementing solutions.

[Paul Yeager] I grew up without air conditioning — we got it right around when I left for college in the mid-'90s. I slept many nights in front of a box fan on the lower floor, trying to pull cool air up from the basement. We survived, but that's not a badge of toughness we need to hold onto. How do we understand whether that was a good way to live or not?

[V. Kelly Turner] I completely relate. I grew up in a home with no central air — it wasn't always hot in New England, but when it was, I have fond memories of my parents running around putting box fans in the windows and pulling the curtains. When it's a once-in-a-while thing, it's not a big deal, but when you have more and more of these days, it becomes a quality-of-life issue. You do hear people say "tough it out" — I'm a runner, and you hear that a lot in running communities: don't be a wimp. But there's a real physiological limit. Our bodies constantly make heat and get rid of heat — we make heat through activity, sunlight, and other factors, plus our personal health and age. Our bodies do a good job getting rid of heat through sweat and by widening our veins, which is why it's important to stay hydrated. But at a certain point, the body can't keep up. You don't get sick immediately — your core temperature slowly starts to rise, and you'll start to feel dry mouth, headache, nausea, maybe chills. By that point, you're already overheated.

[Paul Yeager] Let's talk about age susceptibility. We always think of the elderly, but is it really kids we need to worry about more?

[V. Kelly Turner] There's a lot of confusion about this right now. If you look at demographics, ER admissions, and mortality rates, one group definitely stands out: older populations. Their bodies just aren't as capable of getting rid of heat. It's similar for kids under five — both poles, the very old and the very young, have a harder time thermoregulating the way an adult can. But here's the big "but": a recent study suggested that maybe children are okay, that schools and daycares aren't where we need to focus. The problem is that survival is a really low bar for childhood. My nine-year-old daughter goes to elementary school, and on an extreme heat day, they keep the kids inside and have them watch TV, because that's the only air-conditioned space available. What kind of childhood is that? The kids don't get outside, they don't burn off energy, and then teachers are dealing with pent-up kids — or, if they went outside, overheated or sick kids. We've kept them safe, but are we giving them a joyful childhood?

[Paul Yeager] Well, your nine-year-old — I'll match that with my 16-year-old playing football last night. It was 105 degrees kicking off, playing on a turf field, so it was probably hotter than that on the surface. He's in great shape and was sweating heavily — his pads were stuck to him. The coaches have gotten better about hydration, but he's also exerting a lot of physical energy. I also had a runner, and his older brother was a runner, plus marching band — we know these groups still try to get outside and have lives. But it's pretty easy to stay inside on the couch or in an air-conditioned classroom.

[V. Kelly Turner] This is a really important point about student athletes — one of the areas where we've had good legislative traction, and a huge shoutout to the Korey Stringer Institute for their research and advocacy. Your son was getting the worst of all worlds — heavy equipment, exerting himself physically during peak heat, probably 3 to 4 in the afternoon, standing on artificial turf, which is actually hotter than asphalt. Kids in those situations need lots of rest breaks. One piece of legislation that's become popular, passed across the Southeast and here in California too, is to monitor the weather and put emergency restrictions in place on what physical activity is allowed. I'm not sure about marching bands specifically, but I've looked a little into cheerleading, and it's fascinating — we have protections for student athletes but not for recreational or club sports in the same way. We protect categories of people, not people themselves. In California, cheerleaders on the sideline in the fall aren't considered athletes, but in the spring, when they're in competitive cheer programs, they are — even though they're doing the same activity. So they have heat protections in spring but not in fall.

[Paul Yeager] I get it. I was watching the cheerleaders last night, and a couple of them had water — I think their coaches were pushing it. The marching band won't wear full uniforms in some of these early, hot games, and practice gets moved back. Our practice tonight is a couple of hours later than normal — we do take precautions. I want to go back to something you said earlier about cities being warm. When I worked at a TV station in eastern Iowa, our meteorologist used to say that as a community grew larger and hotter, weather systems seemed to go around it more than they used to. Was he onto something, or was that bunk?

[V. Kelly Turner] That's absolutely true — precipitation patterns can be affected by urban development, which changes the experience of climate. But I'd argue it also creates new opportunities, especially around heat, because being clustered together gives you shade opportunities and access to services. There's a real urban-rural difference here. We hear a lot about protecting cities from heat, but we also need to protect rural communities from heat. If you're in a rural community, the next building might mean a 20-minute drive to a cooling center — a much different prospect than in an urban area. We've got to rethink the lifestyle and morphology differences.

[Paul Yeager] Let's talk about these towns of 100 to 200 people — there just aren't a lot of those cooling options. When you live in those areas, you might think, "I've been able to live on my own, I'm fine" — but maybe you're really not. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; you can't plant a tree today and get shade from it now. Are there other options for a farmstead or small town that doesn't have the resources you've mentioned?

[V. Kelly Turner] There are two prongs to the answer. One is thermal intelligence — we all have it, like our parents turning their homes into passive cooling systems and knowing your own limits. But that only takes you so far without resources. So there are solutions — things like mobile cooling centers. One issue in rural communities is that hospitals and emergency care can be far away, so what if we bring emergency care to where it's needed instead of forcing people to seek it out?

[Paul Yeager] I hadn't thought about it that way, but that makes sense. Is that financially doable, though? Who pays for it? I'm not asking you to solve public policy, but a lot of these ideas boil down to money in the end.

[V. Kelly Turner] That's a really interesting question. Sometimes there's a market for certain cooling solutions — cool roofs, for example, have become their own industry and have been able to largely self-fund through real estate development. But for things like bringing care and emergency services to communities, that's not a for-profit business — that's when government needs to step in. We see this with schools, too, which are already struggling to have enough teachers on hand. I work with a colleague at Arizona State on something called Heat Ready Schools in Phoenix, and we're bringing that to California. Every community needs this, honestly — you go in, talk to teachers and staff, figure out what resources they have, and implement a plan using the best science that's as cost-free as possible for them.

[Paul Yeager] As you're talking, I'm thinking we have to treat heat the way we treat winter. California winters are different from Iowa's, but the mentality should be the same — I want to limit my exposure because something could happen to my body, the same way I'd worry about frostbite. We already have that mindset for cold; we just need to flip it to summer.

[V. Kelly Turner] Exactly. We have protections for wintertime — for instance, it's illegal to rent an apartment that's too cold to be safe. But on the flip side, there's no universal threshold for heat. Some simple protections are just lacking. And heat can set in quickly — more people die at home than out and about, which is what we saw in the Chicago heat wave. Making sure people have a place to bring their core temperature back down to a reasonable level is one of the biggest things we need to address.

[Paul Yeager] You also mentioned building. I want to explore that a bit. In Florida, we build homes that can withstand hurricanes; in Iowa, we build homes that can withstand tornadoes. You mentioned a smart or cool roof that can help cut down on heat. Tell me more about that.

[V. Kelly Turner] We need to treat the whole building the same way. We have regulations and building codes about insulation and roof reflectivity — cool roofs that reflect sunlight energy away, making it less hot inside and cheaper to cool. That's for new buildings, but there are gaps with retrofitting older buildings — some older homes aren't wired for air conditioning, which becomes a whole electrical project. A home is not a home is not a home — there are rentals, mobile homes, and different categories, and the easiest place to attach new heat standards is new construction through building codes.

[Paul Yeager] Which is similar to hurricane or tornado areas — when they rebuild, that's their chance to start over. I think of Greensburg, Kansas, which rebuilt much greener for a lot of reasons. It sounds like that locks in the standard. But Kelly, let's look at where population growth is happening — it's not where I live, it's not where you're from, it's to the south, near where you went to graduate school. Those are hot regions, not cool ones. Do you think that will accelerate this discussion around building codes, because that's where the population is going?

[V. Kelly Turner] What's going to accelerate the conversation is that massive populations are living at the front lines of heat. Unfortunately, this has been the reality for a lot of communities for a long time, but they haven't been the most enfranchised to speak up and advocate. Now it's going to hit home for regular people — you were supposed to go to the Fourth of July parade this year, but it was unbearable, and you're missing out on those memories with your family, you can't send your kid out to play in the backyard. I think that's what's going to drive change.

[Paul Yeager] I think about my Fourth of July family gathering — we set up tents. My mother is in her 80s, my aunts and uncles are in their 70s and 80s, and we wanted to be outside. You're right — we don't want to retreat inside if we can avoid it, even at 85, 90, 95, 100 degrees. One more thing — you mentioned government a bit. What would a heat officer, whether at a state or federal level, provide? Does every community need one?

[V. Kelly Turner] Yes, every community needs one, at least in the short to mid term. Heat has never had a government home — no agency, federal, state, or local, has been solely responsible for addressing it. Yet heat impacts everything from grid security to transportation systems that most governments do deal with. It's everybody's problem but no one's responsibility. In the worst cases, it's not just a coordination issue — local governments are already stressed and stretched thin — but rules and regulations can actually conflict with one another. Anyone who's tried to plant a tree at a school or put up a shade structure over a bus stop will tell you something that sounds simple is actually massively difficult, because of all the codes and regulations to weed through. Every city needs a chief heat officer, and every state needs one too, to weed through that tangle of plans and regulations and fix those problems.

[Paul Yeager] Before we started recording, we talked about the Iowa State Fair. The Iowa State Patrol has had a truck in a high-traffic area, in direct sun, for years, showing the air temperature and the temperature inside the vehicle. We've seen those demonstrations before, and local news showing cookie dough baking on a car dashboard or an egg frying on the sidewalk. Those are temporary ideas to get on our brains, but it sounds like we need constant help thinking about ways to actually address heat, not just point it out. Is that what you're saying?

[V. Kelly Turner] Yes — and there's actually an opportunity coming up that's relevant to state fairs. There's a farm bill hanging in the balance, and it has protections built in for food and refrigeration, but not necessarily for people. That's a big deal — contamination and food safety can become a huge issue. Every time there's a chance to structure funding for communities, my hope, and I'm a little biased, is that we're asking: will this survive extreme heat events? Because that's going to be the reality we're living through, so we need to bake it into everything we're already doing.

[Paul Yeager] I'm going to test you here in the Corn Belt — the corn, soybean, and wheat growing areas. We're used to heat, but has any of your research looked at correlations between communities and rural areas, and the amount of heat we deal with in corn, soybean, and wheat fields? I thought I'd wait until the very end to push you on this, Kelly — you've already surprised me twice, so I want to hear one more.

[V. Kelly Turner] You're right, that is... The way we primarily assess how hot communities are is through freely available, remotely sensed satellite imagery. One thing that can be a little misleading in agricultural areas is that vegetation sends a signal that it's cool — but for the people actually farming the land, where they're living can be very different from that signal. As a growing season progresses and plants mature, an area can look even cooler in the data because of more mature vegetation, and then there's a massive drop-off once fields are harvested. In urban areas, I'm constantly saying not to rely too heavily on satellite data, because it doesn't reflect how people actually feel — buildings cast shade, or you could be standing on green grass and still feel very hot because the sun is hitting your body directly. The same applies to rural communities — we can't just rely on regional vegetative profiles, because that's not the reality of what people are experiencing.

[Paul Yeager] Next time, I'll send you a book on corn sweat — we'll discuss that at length, and maybe you can come out to the State Fair next year and experience it yourself. Kelly, thank you so very much. I appreciate the time.

[V. Kelly Turner] Thank you so much for having me.

[Paul Yeager] Today's MtoM podcast was brought to you in part by the Iowa Economic Development Authority, creating opportunity for businesses in Iowa by connecting companies, entrepreneurs, and communities with the resources to thrive. Learn more at BusinessIowa.com.

[Paul Yeager] We are produced at Iowa PBS. Our production supervisor is Sean Ingrassia. His crew is Reid Denker, Kevin Rivers, Julie Knutson, Neal Kyer and David Feingold. The executive producer of Market to Market is David Miller. I'm Paul Yeager. We'll see you next time.