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Abstract Extreme heat events are increasing in frequency and intensity, challenging electricity infrastructure due to growing cooling demand and posing public health risks to urbanites. In order to minimize risks from increasing extreme heat, it is critical to (a) project increases in electricity use with urban warming, and (b) identify neighborhoods that are most vulnerable due in part to a lack of air conditioning (AC) and inability to afford increased energy. Here, we utilize smart meter data from 180 476 households in Southern California to quantify increases in residential electricity use per degree warming for each census tract. We also compute AC penetration rates, finding that air conditioners are less prevalent in poorer census tracts. Utilizing climate change projections for end of century, we show that 55% and 30% of the census tracts identified as most vulnerable are expected to experience more than 16 and 32 extreme heat days per year, respectively.
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Inequality in the availability of residential air conditioning across 115 US metropolitan areas
Abstract Continued climate change is increasing the frequency, severity, and duration of populations’ high temperature exposures. Indoor cooling is a key adaptation, especially in urban areas, where heat extremes are intensified—the urban heat island effect (UHI)—making residential air conditioning (AC) availability critical to protecting human health. In the United States, the differences in residential AC prevalence from one metropolitan area to another is well understood, but its intra-urban variation is poorly characterized, obscuring neighborhood-scale variability in populations’ heat vulnerability and adaptive capacity. We address this gap by constructing empirically derived probabilities of residential AC for 45,995 census tracts across 115 metropolitan areas. Within cities, AC is unequally distributed, with census tracts in the urban “core” exhibiting systematically lower prevalence than their suburban counterparts. Moreover, this disparity correlates strongly with multiple indicators of social vulnerability and summer daytime surface UHI intensity, highlighting the challenges that vulnerable urban populations face in adapting to climate-change driven heat stress amplification.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1735087
- PAR ID:
- 10377649
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PNAS Nexus
- Volume:
- 1
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2752-6542
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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