New report finds summers are getting hotter and longer in Texas
NORTH TEXAS – Texas summers have always been hot, but they appear to be getting progressively worse. A new report found Texas cities have seen a significant increase in the number of extremely hot days.
"We see a trend that summers are getting hotter and longer," said Tucker Landesman, a senior researcher with the International Institute for Environment and Development. "Across cities, we're seeing an average of about three degrees Fahrenheit hotter in the average maximum temperature."
The International Institute for Environment and Development, an independent think tank, analyzed decades of data and found all of America's 50 most populated cities have gotten hotter over the past century. According to their research, big cities in Texas have been some of the worst-hit.
"We're experiencing it right now," Landesman said. "And it's not only some imagined person who will suffer. It's the postal worker who delivers my mail every day."
In 1976, Fort Worth saw just over five weeks of 95-plus degree heat. By 2023, that number nearly doubled. Arlington went from 6.5 weeks to more than 11, and Dallas saw a 57% increase in the number of extremely hot days.
"The way that we build our cities actually makes our cities hotter on a daily basis," said Landesman. "It becomes quite obvious when you're walking down a street and you're walking on the pavement, blacktop, asphalt, you have that big concrete building behind you and you can feel the heat radiating."
That urban heat island effect can add as much as 20 degrees to temperatures. It's partly why the City of Lewisville is committed to preserving green spaces as developers across North Texas grab available land for homes and businesses.
"Protecting our canopy, protecting our prairie landscape is as important as maybe our air conditioning systems and all the manmade systems we have in place to keep it tolerable," said Stacie Anaya, the director of Parks & Recreation for the City of Lewisville.
The city is making good on its goal to get 100% of residents living within a 10-minute walk to a park by 2035.
"We want everybody in Lewisville to reap the benefits of living close to green space and have nature get as close to their front door as possible," she said.
Anaya hopes it becomes a blueprint for other communities in North Texas.
"We want healthy infrastructure to go beyond Lewisville's borders," Anaya said. "That's how we're going to stay a really prosperous region in the country and in the world."
Landesman wants the data to inspire people to figure out ways to mitigate and adapt to the increasing temperatures.
"The consequences of inaction, it's very scary to think about, are incalculable not only to our economy, but also our well-being and human life," he said. "Rising temperatures affect all of us."
Earlier this year, the state climatologist at Texas A&M University published a report projecting the number of triple-digit days in Texas to quadruple by 2036.