Ali Kane and Susan Teitelman
On a particularly hot day earlier this month, volunteers from across Missoula County gathered to map heat data as part of a Heat Watch campaign. Using simple heat sensors mounted to their vehicles, citizen scientists drove assigned routes three times during the day, recording air temperature and humidity measurements across the county.
Heat Watch, a collaborative project organized by Missoula County, Climate Smart Missoula, the City of Missoula, and other partners, aims to help the Missoula community better understand heat patterns and plan and prepare for rising temperatures across the county. It’s just one part of a larger local effort to prepare for and respond to extreme heat in Missoula County via our Stay Cool Missoula plan, released last year. And this plan is itself under the umbrella of our County-wide climate resiliency plan, Climate Ready Missoula.
Worldwide, 2024 was the hottest year on record since global temperatures began being recorded in the mid-1800s. Last year was also the hottest year on record in the United States, with extreme heat being the number one weather-related killer. Here in Missoula County, extreme heat is one of the top five extreme weather hazards. We’re experiencing an increase in the number of annual days above 90 degrees, a trend which is expected to continue as a result of climate change.
This summer has been mild and variable here in Missoula: The Heat Watch campaign day was postponed due to unseasonably cool temperatures on our target days in July! But despite this variability from year to year, trends indicate that the frequency of hot days are on the rise.
To build local climate resiliency, we need to ensure our homes, neighborhoods and infrastructure are able to keep us healthy during the heat, and take steps to reduce the urban heat island effect through smart choices like adding trees and green infrastructure. Building resilience isn’t something local government or nonprofits can do alone: engaged citizens like our Heat Watch volunteers are crucial.
So how do we prioritize these kinds of interventions as a community? Gathering local data on hot spots is one key step to understanding how heat impacts different parts of our county – and that’s what Heat Watch is all about.
As temperatures across the county crept up in August, our Heat Watch campaign day finally took place on August 12th. The high was 94 degrees with clear skies – excellent data collection conditions. 33 volunteers drove a total of 36 shifts, collecting tens of thousands of heat measurements. Throughout the day, they covered 722.7 miles throughout Lolo, Missoula, Wye, Frenchtown, Evaro, Huson, East Missoula, Bonner, Milltown, and Turah.
On Heat Watch campaign day, our project team rode along with a few of the volunteers to learn more about their motivations for participating and how climate change has affected them and their communities.
In discussing the personal impacts of climate change, citizen scientist Taylor McPherson told us that something she’s seen throughout her life are the drastic changes in seasons. “I’m originally from Eastern Montana and I remember our childhood snowstorms. We’d have up to four feet of snow in a night and that just doesn’t happen anymore.”
Dave Harmon, another citizen scientist, has lived in Missoula for 35 years and has noticed a shifting climate during this time. Harmon has seen climate impacts on the land he tends in the Rattlesnake. He has also observed changes through his work making ice for Glacier Ice Rink in the winters. He notes that “winters are starting later and ending sooner and these temperatures aren’t conducive to making ice.”
When asked why she was participating as a citizen scientist on Heat Watch, Lauren Gardner responded, “Like a lot of people, I’ve been dealing with some climate anxiety over the past decade or so. It’s been hard trying to find ways to get involved as someone who’s not super science minded. I’m very much a right-brained creative person. I felt a little lost on how to get involved and this seemed like a really good opportunity to do something that is quite easy, but also very important and local community-oriented.”
Gardner is onto something there. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and climate leader, says that climate action is the antidote to climate grief – and this certainly rose as a theme among the citizen scientists who volunteered for this project.
McPherson attributed her motivations for participating in Heat Watch to her love for volunteering as well as her study of environmental science at the University of Montana. “I just love being involved in local science and this was a really good way to do volunteer work,” she said.
McPherson also noted the importance of identifying hot spots in Missoula and the need to direct resources to populations who are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat. “Being able to create infrastructure that supports those communities better because of environmental change would be really impactful.”
While extreme heat may be the number one weather related killer in the United States, those deaths are preventable with proper planning and action – and this is where local heat data collection can really shine. The data gathered from this campaign will be used to create high resolution temperature and heat index maps, demonstrating heat distribution across Missoula County. This data and mapping has important implications for decision making regarding policy, planning, and development as well as the potential to target outreach and resources to communities who are most impacted by heat islands.
The data we collect from Heat Watch will be released to this community later this year, and we hope it will go a long way in building a heat resilient Missoula community. But it’s bigger than just data and planning; this campaign is a great example of local government, nonprofits and community members working together to build climate resiliency in a way that’s tangible and informs real action on the ground. This collaboration isn’t the end! Responding to the climate crisis is the biggest group project ever, and there’s a role for everyone in building a resilient, healthy community.
Alli Kane is the Climate Action Program Coordinator for Missoula County and Susan Teitelman is the Climate Resilience Specialist with Climate Smart Missoula. Climate Smart Missoula brings this Climate Connections column to you twice monthly. Learn more about our work and sign up for our e-newsletter at missoulaclimate.org.