H3AT: 2020 Heat Mapping Campaign

This heat mapping project was part of a larger initiative, Heat Watch, lead by CAPA Strategies and supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Climate Program Office. 

The Houston Harris Heat Action Team (H3AT) was one of 13 communities selected to participate in  2020 summer campaigns . 

Urban areas are especially prone to warmer temperatures compared to nearby rural areas due to having a larger concentration of heat absorbing surfaces (buildings, roads), limited vegetation (such as trees), and heat-producing factors like car use, building energy use and industrial activity. 

This problem, known as the  urban heat island effect , can create issues for human health, infrastructure, and quality of life. 

Not every location heats up the same. It is important to know where urban heat is the highest, which communities are disproportionately affected by heat, and how different areas heat up/cool down throughout the day.

Having local maps of heat and humidity observed and modeled at the street level will help the City of Houston, Harris County, and its partners design projects and policies that address heat-related health issues across the region.

The results from our campaign provide snapshots in time of how urban heat varies across neighborhoods in Harris County on a hot summer day and how local landscape features affect temperature and humidity.

For each time period measured (morning, afternoon, and evening), results are mapped in two ways:

How to use these maps: 

1. Click the "Explore Map" to zoom to different parts of the map

2. Click on a location with results to see data pop up with temperature, relative humidity, and heat index for that location.

Additional mapping resources:

Click  here  for a standalone interactive web app of the main results.

For advanced, licensed ArcGIS Online users to more broadly interact with the results, bring in additional data layers, perform analyses, or pull these layers into other new or existing web maps,  see the  web map .

The elderly, the young, people with underlying conditions, and people who work outdoors are some of the highest risk groups to urban and extreme heat.

However, people are not the only ones affected by extreme heat. Pets, too, are highly vulnerable to high temperatures and heat index.

Photo Credit: Harris County Public Health

This story map was created by HARC for the Houston Harris Heat Action Team (H3AT) 2020 summer mapping campaign. Equipment rental, raw data processing, and model analysis for the campaign were provided by CAPA Strategies. The campaign was funded by NOAA, Lowe’s Home Improvement, and Shell. This campaign would not be possible without our community scientists, who safely and diligently collected these measurements across Houston and Harris County and brought the campaign to life.