Climate Central project shows Houston's urban heat island is changing and warming

ABC13's partners at Climate Central released new data Wednesday morning that shows how Houston's urban heat island can be felt differently from neighborhood to neighborhood. It's not just downtown where the greatest impacts are being felt.

An urban heat island is what happens when a city experiences warmer temperatures because of the given makeup of the city, with its buildings, roads and population all contributing to it.

It's a man-made impact and directly changes the climate in and around the city.

This warming directly results from how our spawning city, the networks of buildings, roads and even our growing population are warming Houston even more.

What scientists at Climate Central have found in this study is which areas of Houston are warming because of the urban heat island and by how much.

Generally, Houston's urban heat island adds around an extra two to five degrees on any given day. But according to this map, much of Houston experiences an urban heat island of six degrees or greater.

Here's an example.

Say the forecast high temperature is 90 degrees. Factor in the additional warmth from the urban heat island, and it could feel like 95 degrees in Rosenberg, 97 in Humble, 98 downtown, or even 99 in Baytown.

ABC13 Meteorologist Elyse Smith spoke to Senior Data Analyst Jen Brady about this project.

One finding that surprised her and her team at Climate Central was how the influence of an urban heat island isn't just in the highest density, most urban areas.

"The great thing about how researchers are looking at urban heat now is they're looking at it from a land cover type. I think we've all gone deep into the suburbs and then in a mall parking lot and realized how much hotter that was than it was being in the neighborhood. Now we know those factors in the mall parking lot are heavily in the cities which is why you traditionally think of it as an urban heat island," said Brady.

Now this is not all doom and gloom.

Brady also spoke to how reducing the impact of an urban heat island is one of the easiest when it comes to tackling climate change.

It could be as simple as adding more green space or planting more trees to provide natural shading, something she says can be fulfilling and motivating, where those within the community can make a difference for their neighbors.