Here's what's contributing to the heat domes in the Twin Cities area
Amid a long, hot summer, the University of Minnesota's Climate Adaption Center is gathering data about heat patterns in the Twin Cities.
Dr. Stefan Liess says there are about three heat islands in the metro: Minneapolis, St. Paul and the area surrounding the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
He says areas of the metro can vary by 2 to 5 degrees, especially at night.
"We're most worried about the night time temperatures where usually in the past, people could turn off the air conditioning, now they leave it on," said Liess. "Some people would do fine just with a hot day, where they feel like, oh, at night it's just all good, my body cools down, I'm good again. But if you don't have this cooling down, then your energies in the body sometimes overheats a little bit and you become more vulnerable to heat islands."
He says it's all about how pourous surfaces are, and cities have harder surfaces like concrete and brick.
"You don't get any evaporation so heat goes into temperature," said Liess.
Liess compares the heat to, of all things, preparing pizza.
"Those are exactly the same materials that we use for ovens. Like the stone oven pizza comes from a stone oven built with stone and we decided to build our city that way too," said Liess. "So therefore we have then all this heat that comes from sunlight which is just a radiation product that turns into heat only when it touches a material. And it goes right into heat on a stone or on concrete."
He says the best way to counteract these hot spots is to have more green space.
"A backyard should be mostly green and not a lot of concrete," he said. "And all these green spaces in inner cities in residential areas would help to alleviate the urban heat island. And then obviously the less energy we use, the cooler our spaces will get in general."
Liess says living in the city is more environmentally friendly than living in the suburbs. That's because all the commuting back and forth adds to those heat islands.
