Heat-related deaths are likely to soar over the next 40 years due to climate warming, but new research has found that increase could be cut by more than half — and virtually eliminated in Atlanta — if major cities across the nation embraced a greener footprint.
The four-year study out of Georgia Tech is the first major national assessment of city residents' health, the impact of rising temperatures and what local officials could do to alleviate a growing crisis.
Heat already kills more people in the United States than hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes combined, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And science shows most major cities, including Atlanta, are already warming at two times the rate of the planet.
With the mercury likely to head higher in coming decades, the number of heat-related deaths in U.S. cities is projected to more than double by 2050, as the Tech report notes. A rise, too, is expected in heat-related illnesses including exhaustion and stroke, which can be fatal especially among vulnerable populations and can also add costs to the public health system.
Enter Tech planning professor Brian Stone Jr., whose research over the past few years has concentrated on climate warming and the concept of "urban heat islands" — where a predominance of concrete and minimal amounts of vegetation exacerbate rising temperatures in cities.
The next obvious step, Stone said, was to look at what cities could do to counteract those conditions, especially the effects related to health and heat. "We're moving into an era of climate adaption," said Stone, the director of Tech's Urban Climate Lab. "But very few cities are studying how to manage rising temperatures."
It is an issue of interest for the CDC, which funded Stone's new study. "Climate change is very concerning from a public health standpoint," said Gino Marinucci, a strategy and policy adviser to the CDC's climate and health program at the National Center for Environmental Health.
The CDC has begun working directly with local communities about how to combat the effects of climate change, an effort helped by Stone’s work. “Awareness is increasing, but we still have a long way to go,” Marinucci said.
Using Atlanta, Philadelphia and Phoenix as his models, Stone found the projected increase in heat-related deaths would be cut by nearly 60 percent if cities adopted sustainability measures including planting more trees and adding green space, decreasing impervious surface areas such as parking lots, and using more reflective materials on roads and rooftops.
Better yet, in his backyard of Atlanta, he found these measures could effectively prevent any increase, not least because they have greater effect if done in increasing numbers. Atlanta, Stone said, includes such a large, sprawling metro region that suburbs taking similar action to modify heat’s impact would have a bigger effect on the core city.
The findings, published online late Wednesday by the academic journal PLOS ONE, are likely to encourage local efforts. Suzanne Burnes, the executive director of the nonprofit Sustainable Atlanta, said her group's work, including Look Up Atlanta, can build on Stone's work, which she said could be applied to related sustainability issues such as water and air quality.
“It’s a positive step in seeing how these solutions are interrelated,” Burnes said.
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