麻豆淫院

Many residents in Miami-Dade County and across the country face the dual challenge of dangerously hot homes and unaffordable cooling costs, which together drive-up intensifying risks to household health and well-being.

A new study on indoor extreme heat connects these two burdens to reveal how the co-occurrence of escalating energy bills and dangerously hot homes in Miami-Dade County exacerbates health and well-being risks for vulnerable households across months of the year.

"Our findings help us understand which types of households are struggling with high indoor heat and high energy bills in a place like Miami, which is hot for many months of the year," said Lyn茅e Turek-Hankins, the lead author of the study that was conducted during her doctoral studies at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science and the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy.

"We expected low-income households would be impacted, but quantifying the risks underscores just how intense the burdens are. Some homes in the county are like greenhouses, in effect鈥攈otter indoors than outdoors. We measured heat in homes with average 'feels like' temperatures above 100掳F, for weeks on end, given the combined effects of temperature and humidity.

"Other households in our study pay up to a third of their income on electricity bills to cool their homes. At the same time, high indoor heat and energy bills are not a problem experienced by low-income households alone.

"College-educated households with moderate incomes are also seriously struggling with indoor heat and energy affordability in some cases. The issues are far-reaching."

In the community-based study, "Interactions between indoor heat and energy affordability amplify household risks in hot-humid US climate zones" in One Earth and conducted in collaboration with Catalyst Miami and the Miami-Dade County government, the researchers measured the heat鈥揺nergy tradeoffs households face.

They found that heat and energy burdens intensify with rising outdoor temperatures. Households can simultaneously experience both dangerous levels of heat and high energy bills, which together increase health and well-being impacts and trade-offs when households forgo expenditures on food or health care, for example.

"We identify different factors that together put households at risk鈥攔elated to income, building and air conditioning quality, and household structure, especially for single-parent households. As the heat seasons grow ever hotter, our findings point to key avenues for policy responses that can protect residents at risk," said Katharine Mach, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the Rosenstiel School.

The researchers identified four pathways that explain which households face burdens from dangerous heat exposure and unaffordable cooling costs, emphasizing that different response strategies are needed depending on whether risks are driven by poor building or air conditioner quality, low income, or household factors that multiply the risks.

Under intensifying temperatures, increasing swaths of the United States will face season-long heat that amplifies household trade-offs between exposure to heat and affordable energy bills.

"Studies such as this one emphasize the need for comprehensive legislation that ensures Florida households are protected when facing extreme weather," said Maria Claudia Schubert-Fontes, the Climate Justice Program Manager at Catalyst Miami.

"This research helps us better understand which factors to consider when designing policies and programs to help people stay safely cool at home affordably," added Jane Gilbert, Chief Heat Officer for Miami-Dade County.