How America’s Hottest City is Innovating to Survive | Weathered 

Parks and green places sound good, but Lake Mead is at 37%. People are using the Colorado to drown lawns to keep them green. Keeping the desert green is not good. Get rid of non-desert plants, plant natural desert plants.

A desert should never be treated like a anything other than a desert…history has shown nature always wins.

Lawns shouldn’t be a solution to cool your environment. Lawns require alot of water, and isn’t ideal in a desert environment. Instead, grow more native drought tolerate plants.

As someone who lives in Phoenix, I feel a strong desire to move to somewhere cooler

These cities really need to consult with experts in permaculture so they don't just plant random trees. There are trees and plants that are drought tolerant and don't require large amounts of water. Also, where you plant , how many you plant and what types of trees you plant are very important. They need to stop thinking of just aesthetics and think long term effects on neighborhoods.

This is a great introduction to heat related sustainability issues. However, grass lawns are a terrible idea in Arizona. There are plenty of native species that use less water and provide the same cooling effect. Desert landscaping is foreign in other states but in Arizona it's essential because we cannot afford to waste water...and lawns here use a lot more water to maintain.

8:25 Where is the roof-top solar? Every single building in the desert SW should be making power.

Shame on that energy supplier for letting a poor woman die just because she didn't had that $1. Inhumane...

Phoenix has the same climate as places like Cairo, Baghdad or Riyadh. Essentially the Saharan and Arabian deserts.

Here in Britain it’s illegal for utilities to shut off services due to lack of payment. It should be illegal all around the world because access to basic resources that keep you alive should be a right not a privilege.

A key insight that is rarely mentioned, is that plants are heat reflective. This is primarily why vegetated areas are cooler. Rewilding abandoned properties into small parks may be a helpful heat mitigation strategy for urban environments.

I live in Mesa Arizona and the amount of parking spots we have for the less amount of cars we have is insane. It makes our cities not only ugly, but hotter as well. It low key sucks here during the summer.

Phoenix native here. In my short lifespan I have witnessed less monsoon seasons and more devastating summers as time progresses. This brings me to an Arizona State University pole that states roughly 30% of participants say their housing situation grew less secure during the pandemic. Unfortunately, this supports the reality that a heat wave disaster is eminent and many people will not even have adequate housing for protection. Upgrading the grid is just one step over this staggering mountain we must climb to survive the effects of global climate change. Wish us luck.

When they said 104 is much cooler, I had a heat stroke.

Painting roads and roofs white or a light color, really help with trapped heat. Also, promoting the growth of native plants and trees. In my city, nearly everyone has trees and plants (native trees come free with any new house), rare to see a bare yard here, it really does do a lot, providing animals with habitat and food while giving people shade and cooling the general area.

I’ve been to Phoenix, and I love it. As far as the temperature is concerned it’s like when someone is baking a cake in the oven then opening up the oven and you feel the heat when it hits you, that’s how hot it is in Phoenix when you step outside your house to go outside.

In addition to being one of the hottest cities, Phoenix is also one of the fastest growing cities in the US

The lack of serious conversation over the design of cities (aka car-oriented design) in this video is a shame. In every way, having to rely on your car for everyday living is literally killing people and the environment in a multitude of ways.

In El Paso the summer heats could reach anywhere between 103°f-115°f and it’s only getting hotter and hotter, so I could only imagine how bad the heat truly is in Phoenix.

“A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”

"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone; they paved paradise, and put up a parkin' lot !" ** Joni Mitchell- 1969 **

I'm going to echo the obvious idea of shading parking lots with solar panels - 2 for 1!

PBS is the only channel on TV that has great shows....thank you PBS :)

When I ride my motorcycle early day or late night and I can feel the difference between the city desert and outer natural areas in the shaded valley well outside the city its easily 20-30 degrees colder

Living in the southern US (south Mississippi!) - we have had folks die even if they didn't lose power, because they were too poor to have even a window unit type AC. We don't generally get power outages from an overload of the grid - from storm damage yes, but not brownouts like Phoenix or NYC has had. But, enough folks have died from heat that there's a program in rural areas to help get people small window unit ACs, and also folks will help create "swamp coolers" (big thing of ice and a fan, it doesn't last long but it can help). In some places, churches open their doors and let folks stay in the building, too. I have family in south Arizona, kind of near the border, and every summer I get a little worried for them because it's just SO hot, and they're in a relatively rural area. But my aunt is super smart and has a lot of native plants all around her place, she has other nifty things like fans that can be run without power, and she tends to keep to a schedule that lets her move around in the early morning and later in the evening so she can avoid the worst heat of day, taking a siesta. But she's a lucky one, she has the financial stability to do those things. It is appalling that the city officials cannot do more for those folks without shelter than a completely unshaded parking lot. And yet - water is not a limitless resource out there and trees are very, very thirsty critters for the most part. Getting shade that way presents its own share of problems. I hope that science and determination will quickly find ways to help more, because like you said - it's only going to get warmer.

We are the ones trying to inhabit non-inhabitable places. People literally build houses at the bottom of volcanoes, at the far reaches of the arctic, in the middle of flood zones, etc. Yes, these places are beautiful or have great resource extraction opportunities, but let's not kid ourselves, some places we are "pilgrims in an unholy land." Phoenix was really a winter retreat but modern technology prolonged that stay to year round, but now people are starting to pay a heavy price.

My PHX neighborhood had two green spaces last year. Both are being paved over right now and turned into condos:( So hot already.

Turf is a great compromise. I switched all grass front and back yard to turf and it does make a big difference. No water needed, it looks great year round and it cools down my back yard :) Love Arizona.. heat and all.

Phoenix was an inferno when I left it a quarter century ago. I can only imagine how intolerable the heat is today. I guarantee you at some threshold it’ll reach a tipping point and those who can afford to will begin to flee.

More trees, less asphalt. It's not that difficult.

The desert animals live underground, sleep during the day and go out at night.

My aunt lives in Phoenix and about 4 years ago her AC broke during June. The extreme heat kept on triggering her asthma and she had to take an emergency flight over here to Seattle just to breathe.

And here I am in the Bay Area dying when temps reach 80. Can't even imagine what 100+ heat would be like.

This last June 19th, I was at camping at Collins Lake in NorCal, and I suffered extreme heat exhaustion better known as heat stroke. I was staying hydrated as much as possible however once you reach a critical stage of dehydration the body shuts down its digestive system. That is what happened to me.This was a family outing. My brothers (from other mothers) their kids, and me and my kids were out swimming and boating most of the morning. Then we had lunch around noonish. By the time we got back to camp just after 5:pm, I was feeling sick to my stomach and I could feel something was VERY VERY wrong. I vomited the food up from earlier, and the water I just had been drinking. In the vomit, I saw the food I had eaten 5 hours prior. It was at this point I told my brother that I needed to be taken to the Collins lake market as they have on site emergency personnel. I KNOW it takes less than 2 hours for food to pass through the stomach sphincter, and the ONLY way for it to stay in the stomach was if my digestive system had shut down which only happens when the body is extremely stressed like during the flight or fight response or in my case extreme heat exhaustion. I went into the market had them call EMS. It scared the hell out of my kids to see me hauled away in a stretcher. After I got to the hospital I started to suffer from heat induced delirium., those MOFOs in the ER thought I was on m-eth.. Can't blame them really, delirium and being high on methamphetamine looks almost the same. I pass out some time after 7:pm.. I wake up around 3 in the morning to me pissing myself in my hospital bed. My arm is on FIRE because of the Potassium they were pumping into my veins. It took 9 bags or 9,000 ML (9 liters) of potassium chloride. Potassium and sodium are chemicals that are responsible for signaling muscles when to expand and contract in the body... ALL muscles, which why I am lucky I didn't have a heart attack because my potassium was so low. It took them just pass noon on Monday to get my sodium and potassium levels right. I was on the VERGE of death. My kidneys had shut down and my doctor said if I hadn't come in when I did, I would have died.. Not could have.. I WOULD have died. It was supposed to be a fun weekend. It turned out to be the first fathers day that my kids DIDN'T get to spend the day with me which is REALLY bad as I am the custodial parent. It is the wee hours of June 29th.. My incident was almost 10 days ago (minus a few hours at this point) and I still don't feel 100%.. From now on, when ever I even leave the house when the temperature is over 85 degrees, I will be carrying pedialyte and have hydrated myself 3 hours before hand. No matter where you fall on the global warming (climate change) debate the heat can kill.. Be safe out there everyone!

you put a VAST amounts of lawns and trees in Phoenix, Vegas etc..... WATER becomes MORE of an issue, you NEED to pick a battle

The fact that American cities are built with panic to building taller than 2 stores and oversized streets and parking lots instead of on street parking worse the effect compared with Spanish cities, where the proximity between buildings provide shade to one another and to the people/parked cars.

I was born in Florida and lived there for 29 years, 8 years of which I worked outdoors. 90 degrees and 95 percent humidity was typical for around 8 months a year. I moved to The Pacific Northwest at age 29 because of the stifling heat and never looked back. My great ancestors faced down the last ice age; I don't think they would survive Phoenix today, unless maybe they could get work in a walk-in freezer or some such.

Hey, I have a great idea, let's build a city in the middle of the desert and then complain about how hot it is.

Just this week canada recorded a record high of 121 degrees, which is mind boggling and is even hot for places like arizona and California

I remember hearing about that poor woman that died. I believe I read she died in one of the Sun City Retirement communities in Northwest Phoenix area. It should be against the law to shut off the electricity of a resident in Arizona, because of the deadly heat. Especially a senior citizen. Talk about a low life electric company that did that shut off.

Phx native here, honestly yeah it does kill people but over the summer as long as you keep water sunscreen and your car or the building you are in for the day has AC. You’ll be fine, helps that our blood thins too. I’ve done football sprints full gear in 110 fahrenheit

I live in Georgia, and I dream of moving to Utqiagvik Alaska. Think of all the water and ice. Ahh... sweet sweet cold. Instead, I live in heck. There was a job that was perfect for me, but I'd have to move to Arizona, north of Phoenix. I said NOPE. I don't want to move to a lower circle of heck. No thank you!

As some who lives in Phoenix I can’t underestimate how hot it gets here.

9:26, it would be nice to also provide water through a tap or something like that instead of small plastic bottles.

There can be nothing that I can think of that would make me live in a place with 53 days above 110F. they could double my salary and I'd turn it down

Phoenix tourism brags that they have over 200 golf courses. A golf course in a desert uses 100,000 gallons of water per day

Solar panel shade structures over EVERY parking lot. Kills two birds: 1) reduces the use of fossil fuels 2) it keeps the parking surface from absorbing heat throughout the day. There are several parking lots here on Maui that are shaded with solar panels, including at the local Costco. It's just an obvious solution. Like at the Justa Center. While that is a place to get out of the heat, they're using electricity for the fans. Make the shade structure more permanent and put solar panels on top to power the fans.

Or how about removing gargantuan patking lots and freeways? And while green spaces are great, Pheonix is in a desert and the Colorado river is seeing less water flow from declining snowpack

We need to have more trees within cities, find and use a different alternative for road building, and apply sustainable infrastructure.

Was really hoping to hear that they had initiated a vigorous re-greening program. There's a lot of drought tolerant vegetation that can serve as shade and air quality improvement

Lawns !?! FFS people. It's already madness that we have a city of over 4 million people in the middle of the desert.

I love this series! Thanks for all the free education 🥰 I always learn so much from your videos

They need to report the “heat load” temperatures everyday on the weather instead of lying about it. Everyday they say one temperature and then driving around it’s like 6-8 degrees hotter then the forecast- consistency. I live in south Florida we generally don’t get to 100 often but we have very high humidity, so it feels 100 degrees plus. Urban heat island is horrible here, too. They need more parks and shade in places.

Plant in and outside your house guys. All hands on deck. - Take care from the Philippines.

I’ve learned that the culture here in PHX is to never go outside, unless it’s early morning or sunset. I can’t imagine being displaced and unhoused in this weather.

More people need to have solar systems with battery backup, you absolutely can run an AC unit with solar especially somewhere like AZ

@3:20 one of the worst parts of heat stress is it causes diarrhoea - you lose even more water to help regulate body temp. I had that when i was in Nepal when it was mid-high 30s. 40+ sounds horrific.

I live in a very rural area and when we drive to town, which is about 30 minutes away, there is a huge difference in the temperature between home and there.

Arizona is getting hotter every year

I live in Phoenix, there's always a huge push for green energy and sustainability in the court house, but republicans and lobbying groups fight hard to invalidate the climate crisis here. Not having congress men and women who will fight for these changes also makes change hard.

Great videos, lovely production, speakers, music, keep it up. Much love from Amsterdam

Shoutout to when you are an intern in 2020 who landed a last minute internship for an inner city clinic serving the underserved and they show the street in which you lived for that summer in the downtown area!

After a short bit of toasty weather a few weeks ago, we in Phoenix are enjoying a rather mild summer. It's July and temps are barely breaking 100. Lovin' it.

8:20 emissivity of materials makes a huge difference for IR thermometers

The only genius that can beat the one who builds a city next to an active volcano is the guy who build a city in the middle of the desert

There are 2 nearly parallel streets in my town (there's a slight curve to one) half a mile at their widest distance. One has lots of lawns, gardens, and oaks lining the road. That road is also 2 lanes wider. The other is mostly lined with shops and apartment buildings with little to no yard. The wider one is often noticeably cooler than the narrower one, even when lake effect (off Lake Erie) isn't a factor.

This kind of topic makes me glad I live in Wisconsin. Though we can have a different problem here of extreme cold in the winter. But I don't think those days occur as often as dangerously hot days in Arizona. It's also a lot easier to give blankets to the homeless (of course shelters are preferable...), than it is to deal with extreme heat. Too bad the answer couldn't be for people to just not live in Arizona, or extremely hot areas.

So where exactly is the innovation? Putting people in tents with huge fans is a work-around, not an innovative solution.

Need to start building underground like Coober Pedy in Australia. If you have most of your dwelling underground you do not need air conditioning.

So sad that we face these changes, and that the most vulnerable suffer most. It breaks my heart.

Build homes underground, Australia has entire communities.

The grim reality is mother nature has not designed desert to sustain large population on a consistent basis.

I miss Arizona, I grew up there.

This is amazing! Thank you for letting us know how to help.

Loving This Channel keep it up!

Condensation water from air conditioning units, especially commercial units, needs to be harvested and used in convection cooling towers in public spaces that can cool down large areas drawing in high ground temperature air and replacing it with cool moist air. Venturi shaded cooling towers, much like those used at nuclear power plans but on a smaller scale, would draw in high temp low velocity air that becomes high pressure high velocity air as it rises with minimal use of fans to start the air flowing. The reclaimed water is almost pure and can be used to water plants and trees for more shade and sprayed out through misting nozzles to aid in cooling like giant swamp coolers. A rebar frame with a dense light colored shade cloth or white plastic covering could be constructed in open areas and plazas with misters on surrounding buildings should do the trick. Painting roofs and coating asphalt white helps just don’t put huge solar arrays in their place as they would create more heat. The number one waste of water in our desert regions is golf courses. The gallons per person patronage is a huge misuse of this life giving resource. The USGS estimates one person uses 80-100 gallons a day in our daily lives. If an average 18 hole golf course uses an estimated 1 million gallons a day in desert regions they would have to have 10,000 people a day play and that would double each golfers daily water use. At the Naval base in Guantanamo Bay Cuba they stopped watering the fairways on the golf course in the 60’s and only water the tee boxes and greens. This made one of the worlds most challenging courses more challenging as the fairways quickly became dirt and rocks. Turf mats were allowed and rule exceptions made for those long straight drives that go awry because your ball stuck a small stone and bounces out of bounds. Beware the banana rats though they love to steal your ball.

We need to plant more trees in our desert city specifically mesquite since they have lots of shade.

Keep up this great content, PBS Terra 💐

You have a great voice for narrating. Glad I found this video. Nice work

Me in England sweating in 27c degrees

I will take this dry heat over humidity any dayyyyyyy

I live in Scottsdale but am thrilled to be in Chicago currently.

Thanks for adding the metric conversion graphics. Good job,

You'd think the homeless could be employed to refine and recycle plastics to make large community umbrellas.

Insane timing, I’m here on vacation in Phoenix right now!

I lived in Phoenix for 10 years. It's so dry there we didn't even turn on our air conditioner until it went over 100. It's hot, sure, but I didn't find the heat to be that bad, really.

Still have the scar from my burning seatbelt buckle.. Thankyou Phoenix

Phoenix is also running out of water... They need to start investing in atmospheric water generators.

Checking in to say, I live in one of the neighborhoods being tested for the cool pavement treatment. I was excited at first but now I have a big concerns. The treatment has a fine reflective glitter mixed into it and I can no longer keep my front window open because the street is so bright. It is painful to look at. Will cause blindness overtime? What is too bright of a reflection for the human eye? Another concern is that it is more slippery than regular asphalt. I 'peel' out just turning a corner. Does it cause people to slide more when breaking?

55 days that reached at least 110 in Palm Springs, CA in 2020. As of Oct. 6, there were 141 days of 100+ (I can't find a record for after Oct. 6, but 100+ is common until mid-month, so my guess is 143 or so days with triple digit heat). Places like Yuma, Blythe, Lake Havasu City, Indio, Parker, El Centro, etc., are similar. In other words the Sonora Desert, which is hotter than the Mojave.

Thank you for the Celcius notation. :)

There’s no way, I could live in that suffocating heat.

I feel like this is different for Phoenix natives and people who have moved recently, I have lived in Phoenix my entire life and find the heat to be bearable

Despite popular opinion, im a person who is most happy in cold climates and snow. I also live in phoenix. Not only do i literally live through that hell, Its constantly in my face online that there's no where on earth quite like this place. -_-

loved your program!!!

the fact that phoenix even exists terrifies me. I live in probably the only place in the US besides northern alaska with summer highs below 70. I'm also extremely prone to heat migraines and exhaustion and have gotten sick from being out in just 80 degrees for more than an hour. the planet is going to be uninhabitable for me before anyone else, and I feel helpless. more effort needs to be made to reduce the effects of climate change by targeting major corporations that are the primary source of carbon emissions and other environmental damage

Phoenix is awesome but it's become too damn hot and way urbanized overload.. You're better off in Albuquerque or Las Cruces New Mexico, better scenery, tons of entertainment and outdoors, still 100 temps and sun but feels lot less deathly hot then PHX. And its right next door ya know

Concerning subject. Thanks for reporting on this! Great work by the on camera journalist

We still build garbage glass towers & stick structures here that consume enormous amounts of energy, despite knowing better. Everything passes inspection for new-build construction in the name of growth, no matter how dumb. Yesterday I saw a pocket feature on an outside wall where insulation should be, so what hope is there for ICF & passive house design principles?

Heatwaves should scare the living HELL out of every human on 🌍 !