Abhilasha Meshram has witnessed the widespread and debilitating effects that heat can have on those living in an urban center. As the Communications Team Lead for Sustainable Jersey City (SJC), Meshram has been involved in the organization’s initiatives to understand the dangers that excessive heat presents to residents of the city.

However, despite SJC’s efforts to collect preliminary health effects data from Jersey City communities like Greenville and Lafayette, Meshram recognized the importance of continuing research into heat health effects and how gaps in temperature data play a role in increasing the threat of heat illnesses.

“Heat-related illnesses happen sporadically to individuals in their homes, or outside. Some people visit the ER, while others treat it at home,” said Meshram. “It’s hard to find data sources that comprehensively indicate heat-related illnesses.”

Trenton is another urban center that experiences extreme heat, putting the well-being of residents in the city at risk. Unfortunately, like Jersey City, Trenton also has a lack of specific heat data, especially when it comes to temperatures and heat index values for localized neighborhoods throughout the city. So what can Trenton do to address this issue to prevent future heat-related effects of climate change?

Planting more trees throughout the city can provide shade and increase the percentage of tree canopy cover. According to a case study by Vibrant Cities Lab, Trenton only has an average of 12.5% tree canopy cover. Meshram indicated that urban centers like Jersey City and Trenton “need at least 25% tree canopy cover to counter climate change impacts.”

Jersey City’s Adopt-A-Tree program allows residents to request that a tree be planted on their property by the city, according to Meshram. And in Philadelphia, the city’s Parks & Recreation Street Tree Office “can help property owners get a free street tree planted in front of their home, business, or other property,” according to the city’s website.

While Trenton does not currently have a city-funded tree program similar to those of Jersey City and Philadelphia, a Trenton-based organization called Isles has taken matters into their own hands to improve the greenery throughout the city.

“Just two weeks ago Climate Corps planted trees on Estate Street,” said Stephanie Sharo, Isles’ Climate Corps coordinator. 

According to Sharo, Isles also participates in numerous other initiatives aimed at reducing the effects of climate change throughout Trenton, including managing over 60 gardens and demonstrating green infrastructure like “white painted roofs and green roofs.”

The city of Trenton could fund similar programs to those that Isles has developed. In doing so, the city could make climate initiatives more widespread throughout the city, ensuring that every neighborhood receives the support that it needs. 

This method of aligning the work of community members and organizations with the support of government departments and agencies could be used in other ways as well. A common collaborative program that has been used by 60+ cities nationwide is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Urban Heat Island (UHI) mapping campaign. 

This initiative helps cities by providing “funds, scientific support, organizing meetings between all the urban heat island cities, assisting the cities with communication and messaging strategies for talking to the media/public/interested parties, and more,” according to NOAA Affiliate Morgan Zabow.

NOAA’s UHI mapping campaign involves local citizens who live and work within communities affected by extreme heat and aids them in collecting heat data such as temperature and heat index value.

“This way, the volunteers are directly learning about how heat is impacting their community,” said Zabow. 

In Jersey City, this campaign proved to be extremely successful in providing better information and support to residents who have struggled with extreme heat throughout the summer. 

“Having maps of ambient temperature changes through the day helped us identify areas of need and helped us customize solutions in each impacted neighborhood,” said Meshram. 

Many Jersey City government agencies also provided their support during the City’s UHI mapping campaign.

According to Meshram, the Jersey City Department of Health and Human Services “helped print materials, secured City Hall Annex as campaign day HQ and even arranged meals for our volunteers.” The City’s Quality of Life Task Force also lended numerous electric vehicles for volunteers to use while taking data measurements. 

“We were proud to lend Sustainable Jersey City resources to ensure the success of its heat mapping campaign,” said Jake Hudnut, Jersey City prosecutor and chief of the Division of Quality-of-Life Enforcement. 

Philadelphia also completed a NOAA UHI heat mapping campaign in the summer of 2022. Richard Johnson, the director of Climate Year at The Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University, led the program and organized over 50 volunteers and NOAA partners.

Johnson’s team created a “mobile field campaign” that measured air temperature and humidity—information that the city did not previously have for local communities. 

According to Johnson, his team was aware of Philadelphia’s tree program initiative and worked to tie it to their UHI mapping campaign to ensure that more action would be taken against climate issues. 

“Results of the heat campaign would inform the tree plan and also create more awareness and engagement,” said Johnson.

The end result of these mapping campaigns is a “set of high resolution air temperature and humidity data,” according to NOAA’s website. The program also provides “interactive, high resolution web maps of the modeled air temperature and heat index.”

The City of Trenton could build a team of community science partners and submit an application to NOAA for next year’s heat mapping campaign. According to an article published by NOAA, applications for the 2023 program are due by Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. 

However, faculty and students at The College of New Jersey are already working diligently to carry out a project similar to NOAA’s UHI heat mapping campaign. Dr. Nate Magee, professor and chair of the Department of Physics at the College, has spent the semester leading a group of students in implementing Purple Air Quality and Ambient weather stations throughout the downtown Trenton region.

While Magee noted that his project has some differences compared to NOAA’s, the overall intention is the same.

“The goal is to add a dense set of quality measurements where they are currently not available, [especially] near downtown Trenton,” Magee said. 

Despite the work of his team and other community organizations like Isles, Magee says that more needs to be done by the government in order to address extreme heat more quickly.

“Overall, I think that NJDEP and state Dept. of Health should be working on this issue actively, particularly with Trenton as N.J. state capital,” said Magee. 

Trenton has the capability to curb the detrimental effects that the urban heat island effect has on the city. By combining the work of community members and organizations with the funding and support of all levels of government, effective climate action can be taken to quickly address extreme heat.