As summers in Wichita become warmer, a new report by NASA reveals which parts of the city are most vulnerable to extreme heat.
The report found that the city center and a portion of southwest Wichita near the airport suffer the most extreme heat as compared to the eastern and western edges of the city. Heat exposure generally decreases moving outward from the center of the city.
Brooke Laird, the project lead on NASA’s heat mapping report, said this is in line with the urban heat island effect, in which more urbanized areas are typically hotter because they absorb more heat than green space. The report found that the tree canopy was lacking in the city's center and in southwestern Wichita – where the most extreme heat was.
“Because of high amounts of concrete, higher amounts of vehicles, we have kind of a heat island that exists in all urban landscapes,” Laird said. “Where it's going to be a lot hotter in the urban landscape in comparison to some of the more rural areas surrounding the city.”
Extreme heat was the deadliest weather-related killer in the U.S. over the last 30 years, according to the National Weather Service. That’s as Wichita is dealing with increased heat: summer temperatures in Wichita have increased by about one degree Fahrenheit since 1970, according to Climate Central.
“This is only going to get more severe as climate change goes forward,” Laird said.
The Union of Concerned Scientists predicted the number of days above 100 degrees in Kansas’ 4th Congressional District – which includes Wichita – will increase from a historical 13 days to 58 by midcentury, if no action to reduce global heat-trapping emissions is taken.
The NASA report also considered factors based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention social vulnerability index like poverty, age and race. It combined the factors with temperature data to determine which communities are most at-risk to heat.
The report identified 17 census tracts – many of them near the center of the city – that have the highest temperatures and social vulnerability.
“There are some groups – younger groups, groups of the population who are more likely going to work in air conditioned and cooled office space – who are kind of able to escape the heat impacts a little bit easier than other populations,” Laird said. “This impact of heat isn't affecting everyone in the same way.”
Ritisha Ghosh led a second phase of the heat mapping research. She said that the analysis found that the distribution of urban heat islands aligns with zip codes that were historically redlined. In the 1930s, the federal government ‘redlined’ communities by mapping out which areas of the city were desirable for mortgage lenders and which were not. Areas with Black populations were typically marked as less desirable and outlined in red.
“It's not just these populations are socially vulnerable and have been historically redlined, but also they experience that added heat aspect aspect,” Ghosh said, “which makes them a priority for any heat initiatives.”
The heat mapping report comes as the city is losing trees on its property. In the past decade, the city had a net loss of approximately 3,300 trees a year because of a focus on tree removals following a drought, according to Wichita’s 2023-2024 budget.
Elizabeth Bishop is the co-founder of ICT Trees, a nonprofit focused on expanding Wichita’s tree canopy. She said the NASA report shows the city needs to take action reversing the city’s tree deficit. Trees can lower temperatures by providing shade and emitting water into the atmosphere.
“We are coming up to the need to deal with heat,” Bishop said. “... Last summer especially was a good illustration of what we're going to be faced with. So we need to get on it.”
Last summer, the number of days above 100 degrees in Wichita put it in the top 10% of its recorded history.
Megan Lovely, a spokesperson with the city of Wichita, said that the NASA study is being used to inform the city’s draft of a tree policy. The draft specifies tree planting and density requirements when construction and development takes place on city land.
“It addresses our need to grow our urban canopy as one way to address environment justice inequity,” Lovely wrote in an email to KMUW.
The policy has been in development since April 2022.
Bishop said she’s not sure why the policy hasn’t moved out of draft version in over a year, but she wants to see it completed soon.
For researchers like Laird and Ghosh, the heat mapping study was a way to provide Wichita’s decision makers with information not only about what parts of the city see the highest temperatures – but which parts are the least prepared to deal with them.
“We wanted to be able to provide maps to the city of Wichita that could … help them prioritize areas that need heat mitigation and prioritize those areas based on how vulnerable they are to heat,” Ghosh said. “So we just wanted to just gather some research and tools to just better help the city know which ways to allocate their resources to build climate resiliency.”
The study can be viewed in an accessible StoryMap version here.
