Lead: Radley Horton
Counselors: Ning Lin, Bob Kopp

This research is focused on understanding extreme heat stress hazards and impacts in the current and future climate. While most prior analyses have been univariate, meaning that they typically focus on air temperature alone, this analysis includes multivariate dimensions, including humidity, wind, and radiant heating from sunlight. Multivariate approaches to heat stress are increasingly being requested by stakeholders in the MACH region, including in Philadelphia, where this research is focused, since they have outsized impacts on vulnerable communities. Researchers are using sensors to explore how heat stress can vary across neighborhoods, based on the presence of features like tree canopy, and building height to help inform vulnerability reduction and heat resilience efforts. They are exploring how what is actually experienced by different groups locally at the street-level and in buildings can differ from what the lower spatial resolution gridded data products widely used for risk assessment would suggest. The team is also exploring relationships between heat stress on land and nearby water temperatures. Long term, this information will be used to develop more nuanced heat stress projections that reflect both the multitude of climate variables that underlie heat stress, and the high spatial variability of urban environments