Researchers at the US National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) have developed a new dataset aimed at helping city governments and health officials better understand and reduce the impacts of extreme heat on residents.
Heat stress is a leading cause of weather-related deaths and can be especially dangerous in cities, where urban heat islands drive temperatures higher than in surrounding rural areas. A city’s layout, including building height and density, can affect not just recorded temperature but also how hot conditions actually feel due to factors such as wind and shade, meaning more than temperature data alone is needed to assess heat impacts.
Researchers at NSF NCAR, Emory University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill developed high-resolution urban meteorology datasets, beginning with Atlanta. The result is the High-resolution Urban Meteorology for Impacts Dataset for Atlanta Metropolitan Region (HUMID-Atlanta).
“This is a useful tool in actually quantifying how human beings experience heat in an urban environment and how factors like wind or humidity influence the impacts,” said Tzu-Shun Lin, an NSF NCAR scientist and lead author of the paper. “HUMID-Atlanta is just the first dataset of its kind. We’re already talking with other major cities and looking into the possibility of creating a version for the entire conterminous US”
The research was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and is published in the journal Scientific Data.
To build HUMID-Atlanta, Lin and colleagues began with an existing NSF NCAR dataset called HUMID, which combined an offline urban model with temperature and humidity measurements from 1980-2018 but did not capture how the atmosphere interacts with the urban environment. The team coupled HUMID with NSF NCAR’s Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, using its WRF-Urban extension to incorporate details such as building height, allowing the dataset to capture how wind moves around buildings and affects cooling.
The enhanced dataset covers 2010-2023 and can be cross-referenced with records such as hospitalizations to help researchers identify which combinations of weather and infrastructure drive spikes in heat stress. HUMID-Atlanta is publicly available, and researchers have already extended it through 2025, with plans to apply the method to other large cities and potentially nationwide or globally.
Andrew Newman, an NSF NCAR senior scientist and study co-author, is working with Emory University colleagues to use the dataset to study the impacts of heat waves on conditions such as acute kidney injury (AKI).
“Not only is acute kidney injury a serious health concern, but the economic burden of treating those with it is substantial,” Newman said. “HUMID-Atlanta and subsequent versions have the ability to fill major gaps in heat health research.”
Read MTI’s exclusive interview with NSF NCAR senior scientist Mausumi Dikpati here