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How mapping 'heat islands' can help cities prepare for extreme heat
A thermal imaging device attached to an iPhone shows a range of temperatures with reds and oranges representing hot conditions. Some cities are mapping heat to better understand how to prepare for extreme temperatures.
Britny Cordera/KOSU
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A thermal imaging device attached to an iPhone shows a range of temperatures with reds and oranges representing hot conditions. Some cities are mapping heat to better understand how to prepare for extreme temperatures.
Britny Cordera/KOSU
Climate change, driven primarily by burning fossil fuels, pushed temperatures so high last year that scientists were astounded when 2023 became the hottest year on record. Communities like Oklahoma City are now preparing for a future with extreme temperatures by understanding which areas are the hottest.
Last year, Oklahoma City joined 14 other cities in a national project through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to map where heat lingers in neighborhoods. Oklahoma City’s Office of Sustainability, in partnership with the University of Oklahoma, and other environmental organizations, recruited volunteers to act as “citizen scientists” to help researchers gather key data.
Those citizen scientists attached air quality and heat monitoring sensors to their cars to take air and temperature readings of the hottest neighborhoods in Oklahoma City on an August day last year.
Understanding where heat pockets persist in communities is the first step to cooling those places down — and protecting residents from heat illness. Hongwan Li, an assistant professor in the College of Public Health at the University of Oklahoma, researches air quality and helped collect data last summer.
“If we want to take a deeper look for the heat stress like in our communities, community-based is the most appropriate way to understand the heat stress better,” Li said.
The data from the sensors last summer showed that downtown Oklahoma City was 15 degrees hotter than the outer edges of the city, like neighborhoods near Lake Stanley-Draper in the southeast.
Sarah Terry-Cobo, associate planner for Oklahoma City’s Office of Sustainability, led last year’s heat mapping efforts. She was surprised to find out that Mesta Park – with its large sycamore and oak trees that tower over houses – was one of the hottest areas in Oklahoma City.
“A more affluent area like Mesta Park has a lot of older tree canopy that’s intact,” Terry-Cobo said. “And that, you know, is still pretty hot compared to some of these other neighborhoods that we were expecting to be very hot.”
Air quality and heat mapping devices are attached to cars. Volunteers then drive a route to collect temperature and air quality data.
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Air quality and heat mapping devices are attached to cars. Volunteers then drive a route to collect temperature and air quality data.
Britny Cordera/KOSU
Trees don’t always provide enough cooling because heat gets trapped in roofs, roads, and sidewalks creating what’s called the urban heat island effect.
Terry-Cobo walked around downtown Oklahoma City that rainy, humid August day capturing thermal images on her phone. The high for the day reached 98 degrees.
The prairie habitat at the Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City, for example, had cooler temperatures than the concrete that makes up the core of the city. Thermal imaging put the sidewalk at 93 degrees while tree shade was at 85 degrees.
“What we’re seeing right now in the Myriad Gardens is a great example of a potential cooling strategy for urban heat islands,” she said.
Cooling strategies can come from understanding the hottest parts of urban areas. Since 2017, NOAA has funded the Climate Adaptation Planning and Analytics Heat Watch program (CAPA) to help organize and provide the equipment and results to over 60 communities across the U.S. and internationally.
Joey Williams, the project manager for CAPA Heat Watch, said heat mapping started to help people learn about where extreme heat impacts their lives, and to help cities come up with strategies to address it.
“As the threat of heat continues to rise, people become more aware that heat is an issue and life threatening and it affects different people differently,” Williams said. “Having this kind of awareness that that’s an issue can be a lifesaver.”
Kansas City, Missouri used its heat mapping data from 2021 to understand where the city lacked tree canopy.
Andy Savastino, chief environmental officer with the city said that helped inform a new policy to preserve the city’s tree canopy.
“Now, any time a developer wants to come into areas where there is an old growth forest, our tree preservation ordinance, which we never had one before, applies so that there is a requirement for developers to replace a percentage of the trees they take down,” he said.
The city of Little Rock, Arkansas found during its heat mapping project last August that the hottest parts of the city didn’t cool off at night.
Lennie Massanelli, the sustainability officer for the city, said that meant temperatures in the morning were hotter than the afternoon.
“At the very beginning of the day, the 6 to 7 a.m. map showed the hottest pockets of Little Rock, where heat just kind of stayed in one place,” she said.
Oklahoma City’s heat mapping campaign found the city needs more trees and fewer parking lots to help cool off neighborhoods during the hottest months.
Oklahoma City’s sustainability office is developing a guide book this year to help city leaders determine the best ways to adapt to extreme heat. Terry-Cobo hopes that will include everything from changing zoning laws for parking to reclaiming native habitat wherever the city can — all in an effort to cool down some of the hottest parts of the city.
new video loaded: Singer D4vd Is Charged With Murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez
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transcript
Singer D4vd Is Charged With Murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez
The musician D4vd was charged with murder on Monday, seven months after the police said that the body of a teenage girl, Celeste Rivas Hernandez, had been found in the trunk of his Tesla. D4vd, whose real name is David Burke, pleaded not guilty to the charges.
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“On April 23, 2025, as has been alleged by the complaint, Celeste, a 14-year-old at that time, went to Mr. Burke’s house in the Hollywood Hills. She was never heard from again.” “These charges include the most serious charges that a D.A.‘s office can bring. That is first-degree murder with special circumstances. The special circumstances being lying in wait, committing this crime for financial gain or murdering a witness in an investigation. These special circumstances carry with it, along with the first-degree murder charge, a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole, or the death penalty.” “We believe the actual evidence will show David Burke did not murder Celeste Revis Hernandez nor was he the cause of her death.”
By Jackeline Luna
April 20, 2026
In this photo illustration, The Onion website is displayed on a computer screen, showing a satirical story titled Here’s Why I Decided To Buy ‘InfoWars’, on November 14, 2024 in Pasadena, California.
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The satirical website, The Onion, has a new deal to take over Infowars, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s far-right media company. If approved by a Texas judge, the deal would take away his Infowars microphone, and allow The Onion to resume its plans to turn the website into a parody of itself.
Families of those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who sued Jones for defamation, want the sale to happen. They’re still waiting to collect on the nearly $1.3 billion judgement they won against Jones for spreading lies that they faked the deaths of their children in order to boost support for gun control. That prompted Jones’s followers to harass and threaten the families for years.
The families are also eager to take away Jones’s platform for spewing such conspiracy theories. The deal not only would divorce Jones from his Infowars brand, but it would turn the platform against him by allowing The Onion to mock his kind of conspiracy mongering and advocate for gun control.
The families “took on Alex Jones to stop him from inflicting the same harm on others” by using “his corrupt business platform to torment and harass them for profit,” said Chris Mattei, one of the attorneys for the families. “When Infowars finally goes dark, the machinery of lies that Jones built will become a force for social good, thanks to the families’ courage and The Onion’s vision, persistence and stewardship.”
A mourner visits the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial on the 10th anniversary of the school shooting on Dec.14, 2022 in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty-six people were shot and killed, including 20 first graders and 6 educators, in one of the deadliest elementary school shootings in U.S. history.
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For its part The Onion called it a “significant step in an effort to transform one of the internet’s more notorious misinformation platforms into a new comedy network for satire.” The company says it could announce its new rollout of Infowars in a matter of weeks if the judge approves the deal.
“Eight years, almost to the day, after the Sandy Hook parents first filed suit against Alex Jones, they’ll finally get some justice, and even some money,” said Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion. “This is a chance to make something genuinely new out of a very broken piece of media history.”
On its website Monday, The Onion posted a satirical message from the fictional CEO of its parent company, Global Tetrahedron, “Bryce P. Tetraeder,” stating a “dream is finally coming true.”
Jones’s posted on X Monday that “The Onion Has Fraudulently Claimed AGAIN That It Owns Infowars!!!” adding that “The Democrat Party Disinformation Publication Is Publicly Bragging About Its Plan To Silence Alex Jones’ Infowars And Then Steal & Misrepresent His Identity!”
On a podcast in March, Jones alluded to the impending demise of Infowars, saying, “We’re getting shut down. We beat so many attacks. But finally, we’re shutting down like the middle of next month,” before insisting, “We’re going to be fine.”
Jones suggested Monday he would appeal any court decision to approve the leasing deal. And even if he loses control of Infowars, Jones could continue to broadcast from another studio, under another name.
Jones’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.
More than a year ago, a federal bankruptcy judge rejected The Onion’s first attempt to buy Infowars through a bankruptcy auction, saying the process was flawed. Since then, the bankruptcy court clarified that because Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, is not itself in bankruptcy, its property should be handled instead by a Texas state receiver. That cleared the way for the new pending deal to lease Infowars to The Onion, with the hope that a future sale could be approved.
In papers filed in state court, the Texas receiver said he “determined that licensing the Intellectual Property is in the best interest of the receivership estate.”
The deal calls for The Onion to pay $81,000 a month to license the Infowars.com domain and brand name, which the receiver says will “cover carrying costs to preserve and protect the assets of the receivership estate” until an appeal filed by Jones is decided and the path is cleared for a sale.
Jones’s personal bankruptcy case is proceeding in federal bankruptcy court, where a trustee continues to sell off Jones’s personal property, including cars, homes, watches and guns, with proceeds intended for the families.
A memorial to massacre victims stands near the former site of Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14, 2013 in Newtown, Connecticut, one year after Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 first graders and six adults at the school.
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US negotiators to head to Pakistan and Iranian cargo ship seized – a recappublished at 00:37 BST 20 April
Tankers in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday
Here’s a recap of the latest developments.
US negotiators will head to Pakistan on Monday with the intention of holding further talks on ending the war, Trump says – but Iranian state media cites unnamed officials as saying Tehran has “no plans for now to participate”.
The prospect of further high-level negotiations – a White House official says Vice-President JD Vance will attend – comes amid reports of fresh attacks on commercial vessels.
Trump says the navy intercepted and took “custody” of an Iranian tanker attempting to pass through the US blockade, “blowing a hole” in the ship’s engine room in the process.
Earlier, in the same post announcing his representatives would travel for more talks, Trump renewed his threat to destroy Iranian energy sites and bridges if no deal is reached.
Reports in Iranian media over the weekend suggest Iran is continuing to work on plans to potentially apply a toll to ships passing through the strait – although it’s unclear if such a move will be implemented.
Iranian state TV cites unnamed officials as saying that “continuation of the so-called naval blockade, violation of the ceasefire and threatening US rhetoric” are slowing progress in reaching an agreement.
Trump also accused Iran of violating the ceasefire, saying more commercial ships have been attacked by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.
A UK maritime agency reported two commercial ships came under fire in the strait on Saturday.
Iran’s foreign minister had said on Friday that the strait would be opened – which was shortly followed by Trump saying the US naval blockade of Iranian ports would remain in place until a deal is reached. Iran has since said the strait is closed again.
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