Outdoor workers are among the most susceptible to heat-related illness when temperatures spike.
Local laborers have certainly been feeling the strain the past few days with a lingering heat wave that saw temperatures reach near record-breaking highs over the weekend and heat indexes sour past 110 degrees Fahrenheit in Fayetteville.
“It gets to the point where it feels like you’re dying out here,” said Slim Ingram, an employee of the Fayetteville-based landscaping company Cardinal Landscaping. “You don’t want to take the breaks but it gets to the point where you have to take a break.”
Ingram and his co-worker, Brent Whitcomb, have been battling extreme heat. Wielding leaf-blowers over the hot asphalt of a parking lot on the outskirts of Fayetteville on Tuesday, sweat dripped down their foreheads. They relished a few moments in the shade.
Whitcomb estimates he and Ingram have downed a couple of gallons of water a day lately, and about six Gatorade bottles each. They carry a big jug of water in their truck.
“We stay as hydrated as we can,” Whitcomb said. “I’m ex-military, so if anybody feels like they’re about to faint or they’re going to fall out, I just tell them to sit down, relax,” he said. “We have a job to do,” he added.
Workers like Whitcomb and Ingram have no choice but to endure the heat. On the hottest days, they have to take frequent breaks to get by. The heat index in Fayetteville climbed to 115 degrees on Sunday afternoon, at the height of the heat wave.
“If it’s in three digits, we’re taking probably about 10 minute breaks every hour,” Whitcomb said. “If it’s not, then we take our normal breaks or three breaks a day.”
Fayetteville’s air temperatures this weekend were among the highest recorded since record-keeping began, as the city has rarely reached triple-digit temperatures. On Saturday, the National Weather Service reported a maximum temperature of 100 degrees at the Fayetteville Regional Airport, nine degrees above the average. The record for July 26 is 104 degrees, set in 1940, but Saturday was the third-hottest July 26 on record, according to NWS climate records.
On Sunday, the NWS reported a maximum temperature of 100 degrees at the Fayetteville Regional Airport, which is also nine degrees above the average. The record for July 27 is 106 degrees, also set in 1940, but climate records show Sunday was the fourth-hottest July 27 on record.
The role of climate change in extreme heat
Experts agree that human-caused climate change is making heat waves like the one North Carolina experienced in the past few days increase in intensity, frequency and duration. Climate change, colloquially referred to as global warming, is a result of the emission of greenhouse gases, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, which trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere.
Walter Robinson, a professor at N.C. State University and co-director of the university’s master’s program in Climate Change and Society, studies the relationship between climate change and extreme weather. He told CityView the recent heat wave is an example of the effects of climate change on a local level.
“Climate change is happening, and the earth is getting warmer,” Robinson said. “And that applies everywhere, including in North Carolina.”
While he acknowledges “summers have always been hot here,” and “we’ve had heat waves before,” Robinson said climate change means the record-breaking patterns will become increasingly common if greenhouse gas emissions are left unchecked.
“The day-to-day weather that causes things like heat waves is like rolling the dice,” he said. “So the dice are always being rolled by the weather. But what we’re doing … is we’re loading the dice. So it’s not that we’ve never had 100 degree temperatures before, or 95 degrees before, it’s that we’ve made them more likely by climate change. So it’s increasing the risk or the probability.”
Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index is a science-backed tool frequently used by meteorologists to assess the impact of climate change on temperatures on any given day around the world. According to the index, the hot temperatures Fayetteville experienced between July 25 and July 29 were five times more likely because of climate change.
Robinson agrees with the tool’s methodology. He said scientists can measure climate change impacts by inputting expected temperatures and factoring in the increase caused by global warming. He said that, although average global temperatures have only increased slightly so far — about 2 degrees Fahrenheit of warming over the past 100 years — the slight increase has altered the fundamental playing field for weather, shifting patterns toward the extremes.
“It vastly increases the risk of getting extreme high temperatures,” Robinson told CityView. “And one way to think about that is you start to get temperatures which you’ve never seen before because they would just never have occurred before. You could have waited hundreds of years and not seen a certain temperature. Now those temperatures are occurring sometimes, so the risk of those high temperatures has gone way up.”
Robinson noted that heat is responsible for more deaths than any other extreme weather event. In addition to shifting toward extremes, he said, climate change has had another insidious effect: nighttime temperatures are also increasing. This “striking trend” is different from heat waves in the past, where it tended to get much cooler when the sun went down.
“If it doesn’t cool down as the sun’s starting to go down, that really makes it tough on people,” he said. “And there really are climate impacts on human health. Heat is the number one [weather-related] killer now in the United States, particularly in our region. So it’s really not just uncomfortable, it’s really dangerous for people.”
Government accountability reporter Evey Weisblat can be reached at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
Did you find this story useful or interesting? It was made possible by donations from readers like you to the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization committed to an informed democracy in Fayetteville and Cumberland County.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation so CityView can bring you more news and information like this.
