SAN DIEGO, Calif. (KGTV) - The City of San Diego recently orchestrated a city-wide study to look at temperature variations in different parts of the city at one time and discovered that on a warm day, temperatures can vary by 15 degrees within different neighborhoods within San Diego.
With this knowledge, city leaders hope to build infrastructure that will help cool down some of the hottest parts of the city.
The process started in September of 2021 when volunteers attached devices from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and drove 21 different routes throughout the city.
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“They drove around in predesignated mapping routes and the sensors collected each second the different ambient temperatures along the routes,” said Heidi Vonblum, Interim Planning Director for the City of San Diego’s planning department.
Vonblum says 90,000 measurements were taken during the study, then that data was sent to CAPA Strategies, who compiled the information and created a map of the temperatures around the city.
The map ultimately shows that temperatures can fluctuate by 15 degrees at a given time within city limits.
There are certain parts of San Diego that are much hotter, and Vonblum said a large reason for the differences is infrastructure.
“The level of tree canopy cover, the availability of shade, the type of paving in that particular street block really can make a difference in how people experience an extreme heat event,” she said.
She added that many of the neighborhoods that trend hotter are also lower-income areas, or areas the city calls “communities of concern,” where census data shows people have less access to opportunities and face greater barriers to improving quality of life. To add fuel to the fire, important resources like air conditioning may be more difficult to get for these communities because of older infrastructure or lower incomes.
City leaders now want to take this knowledge and take action to correct the disparities. Vonblum says they’ll implement strategies that will ultimately help keep hyper-local temperatures cooler in those hot spots.
“These strategies can include expanding access to green spaces, urban greening, expanding our urban tree canopy and also just in general increasing shade in our public spaces,” said Vonblum.
This is all part of a big-picture initiative that the city of San Diego announced in 2021 called Climate Resilient SD, which outlines issues that are contributing to climate change locally and ideas on how to correct them. The city is targeting four major issues, including sea-level rise, flooding/drought, extreme heat, and wildfires. The data from the heat map will help inform decisions on how to tackle extreme heat.
