The City of Santa Fe’s Environmental Services Division (ESD) has been awarded an Urban Heat Island Mapping Campaign grant through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to collect on-the-ground temperature data to provide accurate information on the heat experienced by the Santa Fe community.

“Climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of heat waves in our country,” said Sarah Kapnick, Ph.D., NOAA chief scientist.

Volunteer community scientists, led by a team of local partners, will fan out in neighborhoods in the morning, afternoon, and evening on one of the hottest days of the year, collecting data with sensing equipment. The sensors record temperature, humidity, time, and the volunteers’ location every second. The City of Santa Fe is partnering with Santa Fe Public Schools to allow students to participate and gain experience in the study.

This grant provides funds for organizations across the country to work with NOAA’s partner, CAPA Strategies.

CAPA's end-to-end program includes sensor technology, community engagement, analysis, and a final report, which allows communities to develop hyper-local descriptions of the hottest parts of a community.

Now in its eighth year, the NOAA Urban Heat Island mapping campaign addresses extreme heat, the biggest weather-related cause of death in the U.S. for the last three decades.

Summer 2023 was Earth’s hottest on record, and communities across the globe felt the heat, with impacts on health, infrastructure, agriculture, and more.

Communities use their urban heat maps to strategize the placement of trees and shade structures (bus stops or playgrounds, for example), determine areas in need of more outreach, and inform overall city resilience plans.

Santa Fe is part of a group of communities across the country participating in the grant for 2024.

Previous campaigns have led to additional shading structures at bus stops in Las Vegas, NV; a new program to educate residents about community-driven heat solutions in Boston; and have informed the King County, WA Extreme Heat Mitigation Strategy and the Richmond, IN Heat Management Plan.

To keep up with the summer 2024 campaigns, visit the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) website and follow #UrbanHeatMaps2024 on social media.

For more details about Santa Fe, check out the Sustainability Dashboard for more information being released in the future.