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dot org. Hello and welcome to the Texas Tribune trip Cast for July seventh,
twenty twenty three. I'm Alexa Udha, a reporter for the Trib filling
in for Matthew, who has on some well deserved time off this week.
Today we're talking about the heat, not just about how hot it's been in
Texas lately and the deadly implications of that, but what this means for our
state in the long term, as climate change shifts the entire range of Texas
heat upwards. Joining me this week as Aaron Douglas, the Tribunes climate reporter
whose beat covers the impacts of climate change, including extreme heat, drought,
and hurricanes. High erin Hello, So we are chatting at the end of
the week during which we saw the hottest day on Earth since at least nineteen
seventy nine, and potentially in much farther than that. You know, it
was a pretty awful and oppressive June. The heat way we were stuck in,
which seems like it's finally eased, ushered, and essentially a public health
crisis. And all of this comes the summer after heat related debts in Texas
reached a two decade high last year during what up to then had been the
state's second hottest summer on record. Can you walk us through what was going
on and why this heat, you know, even in a state like Texas
felt so unrelenting. Sure. Yeah, So this summer is not expected to
be abnormally hot because we are transitioning right now into an El Nino. Last
summer, we were in a La Ninia pattern, which is essentially like a
big weather pattern caused by the oceans. But basically what it means for Texas
is that La Nina tends to bring us drier weather and that tends to exacerbate
heat. And so last year when we had that record hot summer, we
were in a La Ninia pattern, and so we thought heading into this summer
that it would be a little better, but then we had this big heat
dome event happened. And essentially a heat dome is a weather pattern, and
so what we had was, you know, more than three weeks of one
hundred degree temperature stretching across the state, you know, shattering record. It's
prompting all these excessive heat warnings. And heat waves are very dangerous because they
were so big, and they last for so long, and they affect a
huge area as we saw, like thousands of miles, and they most often
occur in the summer when we have very weak circulation in the atmosphere and not
a lot of energy, and so weather patterns just kind to tend to kind
of just sit on top of you. And so you know, one reason
you might hear it called a heat dome is because the air is essentially shaped
like an inverted stadium, and the warm air gets trapped above an area with
a lot of pressure forming and that pushes the air downward. So the air
is sinking, sinking, compressing, and as that air is pushing downward,
it warms up. Is like a thermodynamic relationship, right, And so because
there's so much pressure pushing downward. It's also squeezing out any chance for clouds
to form to kind of break up this weathered pattern, and so they tend
to stick around for a long time as we saw. And the other issue
with heat domes is that usually we get a break from the heat in Texas
when the sun goes down at night. But in this type of weather system,
the air keeps compressing at night. It doesn't stop when the sun goes
down, and so it continues to create more and more heat even in the
nighttime. So that's basically what happened the last couple of weeks. Yeah,
I'm not sure I had ever even heard the term heat dome before this,
and that inverted stadium is actually a really easy visual to really understand that.
You know, there was a line in one of your recent stories that it's
probably just sort of basic knowledge to people like you who sort of think about
this all day as part of your job. But I found it really astounding
and really saddening that heat is already the most dangerous type of weather, typically
killing more people annually than hurricanes, tornadoes, or flooding. As we think
about the events of the last few weeks and this heat dome and the impact
of these sort of weather events on on folks and the sort of deadly implications
of that. Should we be thinking about it as a new normal? Is
it something that's going that we're going to be seeing more regularly. Is it
still a bit of an outlier? How? How should we think about this
knowing that he is already so dangerous to people. Yeah, he is extremely
dangerous, And I think people take it for granted because it's kind of a
silent killer in a way. And even trying to cover this extreme event,
you know, you hear some anecdotes of folks being reported who are who are
dying in the heat, but it's hard to get it like an overall sense
of the damage because there's not like a big flooding event where you can see
all like literally sealed infrastructure damage, you know. Um, But in terms
of like whether it's a new normal. I actually saw a quote from climate
scientist Michael Mann, who's who's a very famous climate scientist, and he was
quoted in the Asociated Press about a week or two ago where he said along
these lines that quote, if we continue to warm the planet, we don't
settle into some new state, it's an ever moving baseline of worse and worse.
And I think that really captures the problem here, which is like,
it's not as though we are headed towards a certain new climate if we continue
to put fossil fuels into the atmosphere, and until we stop putting fossil fuels
into the atmosphere and creating heat trapping gases in the globe, then we continue
the progression of more and more bad. And so that's why it's not like
an either or it is with every reduction that we get in not putting as
much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is a good thing. And then because it
reduces it mitigates the impact of climate change. And with heat waves in particular,
you know, there's a lot of severe weather events where we may not
have the science to say exactly how climate change is messing with severe weather events,
or we may know a little bit, but not all the waves or
all the mechanisms. Heat is interesting because it's very clear, there's been a
lot of studies on it, and you know, climate change is clearly amplifying
the effects of heat waves, and they're stretching for longer periods of time,
they're reaching higher temperatures than they would otherwise if climate change was not happening,
and they're occurring more often than they would otherwise if climate change was not occurring.
Well, and when you when you think about sort of the gradual way
in which this occurs. The there was recent reporting that y'all did showing really
how over the last ten years, you know, taking a step back,
right, not thinking just of how hot it is today or how hot it's
been this summer, taking a step back and realizing that over the last ten
years that I think that the figure was there were more than sixteen hundred days
when a heat record was matched or broken one of the twenty two weather stations
across Texas. And then even taking a farther step back, there was a
figure that showed that the number of record high temperatures measured across the state had
increased five hundred and ten percent essentially in the last one hundred years. So,
I mean, help us understand how climate change makes things like extreme heat
worse, Like, what is the actual science behind the extreme heat variations that
we're seeing and feeling. Yeah, So if you think about the main mechanism
of climate change is heat being trapped by an increased amount of carbon dioxide and
other heat trapping gases in the atmosphere. So if that's trapping more heat energy,
then that's pushing the average temperature that we're seeing upwards, and that makes
extreme heat higher than we would have otherwise. And so it's essentially as you
said earlier, like shifting the whole baseline to the right, I guess a
little bit. And so you know, the problem is particularly pronounced in areas
in very dry areas like the Southwest due to a lack of soil moisture.
And there are some areas of the US where you know, if you have
a lot of humidity, soil moisture vegetation, then that kind of produces a
cooling effect. But you know, what we saw in the data was areas
where we had a lack of moisture had a really pronounced effect, like seeing
a lot more extreme heat days and a lot more increase in average temperature.
I did want to say too, like you know that figure of in the
last decade there were more than you know, sixteen hundred days of record hot
days. So we compared it to our data team did some fancy analysis.
They figured out that an average decade in Texas starting from the very beginning,
as as far back as we have records from like eighteen ninety five, in
average decade in Texas, we would expect to see around five hundred and sixty
record hot days a year, and so that's a huge difference. Like in
the last decade we saw sixteen hundred verses, what an quote unquote normal decade
would be would be five hundred and sixty. Yeah, that that is quite
a quite good jump. Um. You know, as part of this analysis,
you also found that, you know, obviously every county in Texas has
seen an average increase in temperatures over this sort of last decade that you were
using as a measurement, but that there are areas of the state that have
seen sort of more pronounced jumps in these record breaking temperatures. It was West
Texas, the Panhandle and the Goal. Why why why is this not thought
equally? I know you mentioned things like vegetation and and sort of the ability
to the soil retention or rather humidity or moisture retention in the soil, But
what what is going on that these areas of this eight are feeling it so
much more significantly than other areas. Yeah, So, like we mentioned,
one of the main factors is places with low soil moisture, they're really seeing
that excess solar radiation. There's no cooling effect for them to help them out.
You know, you can kind of think about it like as sweating.
You know, if there's an if there's excess solar radiation happening because of climate
change and because more of the heat is getting trapped in the atmosphere and reflecting
back down to Earth. You know, we sweat to cool our bodies down.
Plants are essentially doing the same thing. Some of the excess energy basically
is going into evaporating the water and that's producing that cooling effect. But there's
other factors as well, Like a couple of scientists mentioned to me, just
increased urbanization of our cities, especially in places like Texas where we're growing super
super fast and cities are expanding, suburbs are expanding, and and there's two
problems with that. One is that there's something called the urban heat island effect,
which you know listeners may know about that, but essentially concrete buildings,
a lack of green spaces that is causing ground level heat to radiate and that
increases the temperatures and cities because you're just bouncing back the heat. You're not
absorbing it or putting it into putting it into anything. You're just taking it
all in versus if you had green spaces or something reflective, then we wouldn't
have that happening. And then we also have the second problem, which is
just that more people are vulnerable to dangers from the heat because they're living in
hot cities. So that makes another another problem other factors. You know,
weather is just random sometimes and that's one thing that the state climatologists pointed out.
You know, there's a lot of different factors, but you know,
climate change, soil moisture, and urban areas, those are some, but
also weather patterns should happen and so and so there's just a lot of variation
and so it's interesting to see. But I think the main takeaway is that,
you know, not all places are going to be affected equally, but
all places in Texas are warming. Let's take a quick break to hear from
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And so obviously we think about the way to respond or the things that need
to change in light of these this increasing baseline and we think about things like
a resalient electric grade, which is something that everyone's often you know, top
of mind for a lot of folks given the last few years here, not
just in extreme weather events when it's cold, but now in the summer when
that demand for you know, running a c is increasing. But you've also
talked to experts who have offered other examples, things like dams and infrastructure that
can also be affected by these sort of increasing baseline temperatures. What how do
we adapt to this and is there a need to sort of separate those changes
on sort of a macro and micro level, because there's an extent to which
I think that an individual person might not be able to make a big difference
in some of these bigger infrastructural conversations. I would think, yeah, yeah,
So on the infrastructure stuff, I think one of the to really keep
in mind is that just a few degrees of difference can really jeopardize electricity and
other types of infrastructure, like are what you call what we kind of call
the built environment is very very vulnerable to changes in our climate because we kind
of built up our whole society assuming that there was a certain range of weather
and a certain range of temperature that was going to happen, and now we're
falling outside of that range more and more frequently, and so with the grid,
the grid is as you said, like very stressed by higher demand when
we see extreme heat, you know, people crank up their air conditioning at
the same time, like higher temperatures are arriving earlier in the season. So
it's not just that we're falling outside of the range of the temperatures. It's
also that different there's different patterns in when we're seeing the high temperatures, and
so that kind of makes a smaller and smaller window for power plants to make
repairs or like make upgrades when they typically do that in the spring and fall,
when they don't expect to see a lot of high demand. Now we're
seeing high demand in the spring and fall because there's very hot temperatures around.
So that's one problem you mentioned the dams. You know a lot of dams
are small, they're privately owned, they were built decades ago. One issue
with climate change is just that you know, extreme rainfall events were less common
when they were built, and so it's calling into question the structural integrity of
dams. It's also just with drought, like on the flip side, having
prop problems with you know, dams just not being filled in not being a
reliable source of water supply for us. Here, I think the point about
like splitting up the big like macro level infrastructure and the micro is really important
because on kind of like the micro level, higher heat and like earlier heat
than we're used to is affecting people on like a human individual level. For
example, like we heard in Webb County where some of the heat related deaths
were being reported a couple of weeks ago, was that, you know,
the medical examiner there said, well, they heard that some people were going
to fix their air conditioning unit, but they hadn't got around to it yet
because we usually see this type of heat in like late July or August,
and so you know, she was saying their County was caught off guard,
like not just the government, but like individual residents were caught off guard by
how extreme this heat was and how early in the season it was. So
I think that's a really like key issue is like informing everyday people, you
know, just on an individual level, that you know you might need to
do your semi preparations earlier than you did in the past. You need to
be more prepared for higher temperatures, and you've seen in the past, even
if you live in an already very very hot area, it's getting more and
more extreme. Speaking with the macro level part of this, you know,
we we we're still in a special session now, but we ended a regular
legislative session a few months ago or weeks ago in which Texas legislators really largely
ignored, please for for some of the critical reforms that environmental advocates had been
asking for. Extreme heat in particular appears to have been sort of largely cast
aside, or at least proposals that could have made a difference or could have
at least tried to address some of the extreme heat we're seeing on the effects
on folks. We know, things like droughts are worsened by higher temperatures,
and instead it often seems like Texas is taking sort of more reactionary steps than
preventative. You're thinking about in the case of drifts, for example, spending
millions of dollars to boost water supplies instead of having sort of these broader conversations
about climate change and what the state needs to do. Obviously, we're in
a state with Republican leadership, you know, a party that hasn't always been
open to having conversations about climate change or even acknowledging that it's real. Is
there a political will to sort of take on those macro level changes and considerations
that need to happen, And do we turn to state legislatures for that or
is the venue on a more federal level. How do you sort of pass
through the need to have some sort of political will to do something about this.
Yeah, we didn't see very much discussion of climate change in the legislature
this past session, if anything to the extent timate change is mentioned. And
she's really like saying things like ESG and renewable energy are are bad and should
be stopped in Texas. Sort of like the dominant narrative for Texas Republicans right
now. But I would say, like, as you mentioned, there does
seem to be some political will to do things like upgrade our infrastructure such as
the power grid and water supplies, and you know, I consider that climate
policy. You know, even if they're not saying the words climate change.
There was also political will to put some money towards building the Eike Dike and
the coastal Barrier along Galveston Bay, and that'll you know, that project is
intended to help protect the Houston region from hurricanes, and you know comes as
a result of Hurricane Ike for it's it's named after. So I mean,
I think stuff like that, there is will to say we're going to protect
our state from weather, but not from climate change. And I think the
question becomes whether Texas is going to do those types of infrastructure upgrades in a
way that makes sense if agencies and leaders implementing the policy and those regulations and
that money aren't taking climate change into account, and so that becomes a big
question. The other question is just whether things that are more squarely related to
climate change, like extreme heat, gets the attention from womakers that it really
deserves. As it becomes more and more of an emergency, and I think
to your point about like what the proper venue is for it at all venues
they think are good. But we do see some action on the local level
in particular. You know, when I was calling around doing some reporting on
this heat dome, you know I heard from Dallas County, for example,
where they have a program to ensure that you can get an affordable or even
like free air conditioning unit or they'll help you fix it. And so that's
a good that's a good local program that is helping people deal with the effects
of climate change. There are cooling centers that local governments like to implement,
but a lot of people don't use them or even know that they exist.
So that's a more challenging policy with like mixed results. I think there are
things we could do, Like our prisons are very dangerous for folks that incarcerated
people and staff in prisons that don't have air conditioning, and that makes it
really unsafe for people there. The legislature did not put money towards fixing that
problem this year, which I think was a big disappointment to advocates in that
space and also time advocates. So it's a mixed bag. There's a lot
of money coming down from the federal government that is going to try to address
some of these things, and I think it kind of remains to be seen
whether Texas is going to take advantage of it and apply it in a way
that makes sense for the state in the context of climate change. Yeah,
because I think you have these broader policy conversations about the effects of extended drought
on industries like agriculture and the production of all sorts of goods and foods.
And there's the financial toll on farmers and ranters who are behind that work.
But then it's also about daily lives, right the folks who maybe don't have
the financial means to actually fix up their air conditioning system or the ability to
sort of keep their homes safely cooled during these sort of weather patterns. Obviously,
the folks whose jobs it is to work outside in these environments. And
you know, to your point about whether this gets the enough attention or the
sort of necessary attention by lawmakers, it seems like we we've often talked about
these things in the on the legislator, in the legislator sphere, through like
industry conversations and less so on those sort of day to day tolls, which
which I think was particularly tough to see with you know, Web County in
particular, where where you quoted the chief Medical Examiner, doctor kern Stern,
she said deaths rolled by heat stroke or rolled accidents, and accidents by definition
are preventable, and all of these deaths could have been prevented. But it's
also that part where not everybody has the means to it's not sort of an
equal playing field and being able to prevent the heat's effect on you. And
I think we see that a lot among the folks who maybe aren't as often
part of conversation at the legislature. Yeah, for sure, I think that
the the quote from the medical examiner is really poignant because again, heat kills
more people than than other weather events annually, and with the heat getting worse
and worse in Texas, I think that we will see more and more deaths.
We're trying to get better about tracking it to um there's that's that's actually
a big issue which I think that the state and local governments could take on
if they wanted to. It's just to get a little bit better at figuring
out just how many people are dying from the heat, because that's something that
you know, we're not going to get for a few more weeks in Texas,
but we won't even get the full toll. Like when we reported at
the end of last year that we saw a two decade high and the number
of people dying from the heat in twenty twenty two, it was a way
under count because he is one of those conditions that you wouldn't necessarily die.
Your death certificate wouldn't necessarily say died from heat stroke. Sometimes it will,
but sometimes they'll be like heart attack, and like he was a amplifying condition
of that death. And so actually figuring out the like total human toll of
how much the heat is causing in excess deaths in Texas is a very very
big question and something that is not really being analyzed by governments in the state
right now. So I guess that's one thing that I would hope is just
that by you know, local government seeing the toll that it's taking on their
communities, they put more emphasis in trying to figure out exactly how bad the
problem is. And as that happens, maybe we get more and more momentum
in places like the legislature, because if people are dying, you know,
whether you think it's caused by climate change or not, I think that there
ought to be a government response. Yeah, it's like that, it's almost
needing to connect all of those pieces that and starting with the fact that often
these death certificates won't actually have the word heat in them, you know.
And it's also you know, I grew up speaking of Web County, I
grew up in Laredo, and like this was a place where, you know,
on those late summer days, you'd be sweating just from the walk from
your office to your car while you waited for your ac to really like higgin
and that was if you had AC in your car, right, And this
was a place where the like the kids who were in banned had to practice
in the mornings before school instead of after because the parking lots were just too
hot for them to actually be able to practice in the in the evenings.
And like all of those things I think are often just like a way of
a life in areas like Laredo where you do have you know, hotter temperatures
in general. But this idea of people dying by heat stroke was like not
and these like warnings and the need to sort of be more preventive preventative about
this are not sort of things I remember even hearing about growing up there.
And I do wonder if as this problem becomes more widespread, as you see
temperatures increase across the state and more and more folks are sadly affected by this,
often in the worst case scenario, was even killed by this. It
is there the possibility that the conversation or the willingness to have the conversation on
a policy level changes when more people feel the impact of this, when it's
not just like one community that's used to living in hot temperatures, but when
you have more communities that are having to deal with the effects of that,
and whether that actually does bring some change to how we even talk about some
of these things. Yeah, I think maybe, but also maybe not,
Because Yeah, I spoke to some researchers about the communication of climate change,
and IL has a really great program on climate change communication where they do some
studies and surveys of public perceptions of climate change and extreme weather events, and
studies have basically found that Republicans and Democrats who go through the exact same weather
event characterize it differently in terms of whether it was caused by climate change or
not, and go through the exact same thing, and their political beliefs will
cause them to interpret that event with a certain lens. Right. But on
the other hand, there we are seeing in some of the surveys that an
increasing number of Americans believe that climate change is occurring. Almost three quarters of
Americans now believe climate change is occurring. And the researcher I spoke with said
she's seeing emerging evidence that experience with extreme weather maybe now playing a bigger role
in people's perceptions of realizing that climate change is happening than it did in the
past. And so I think we're kind of on the early edge of this
and maybe you know, as we see sadly more extreme weather events and more
of the impacts in people's backyards, then they may start to change their mind.
Well, Aaron, thanks for chatting with me about this this week.
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On Behalf of Matthew, who we hope does not abandon us for the cooler
temperatures and scenic views of Colorado. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to y'all
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