Heat Island Resources

Publications

• Urban Heat Island Outreach Materials lists brochures, fact sheets, and other outreach materials on urban heat island formation, planning for excessive heat events, smart growth, and more.
• Reducing Urban Heat Islands: Compendium of Strategies describes mitigation measures that communities can take to address the negative impacts of urban heat islands.
• Climate Change and Extreme Heat Booklet: What You Can Do to Prepare, from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, identifies steps you can take to prepare for an extreme heat event. It answers key questions about extreme heat in a changing climate: why extreme heat is on the rise, how it might affect you, and what you can do before and during an extreme heat event to reduce your health risk.
• Climate Change and Extreme Heat Events (PDF) (20 pp, 3.3MB, About PDF), published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, describes extreme heat events, how they affect public health, and how to prepare for and respond to extreme heat events. It also explains how the frequency, duration, and severity of extreme heat events are increasing as a result of climate change, and includes links to local program and real-world examples from across the country.

Tools

• Community Actions Database contains examples of steps communities have taken to reduce the impacts of urban heat islands.
• Cool Your Community Social Media Toolkit offers English and Spanish content to increase awareness of heat islands, share information on heat island cooling strategies, and encourage individuals to adopt these cooling strategies.

Other Resources

• Newsroom provides recent news items from the media related to urban heat islands and heat island mitigation.
• Webinar recordings feature stakeholder presentations on heat island causes and impacts, cooling solutions, and more.
• Frequent Questions about Heat Islands features common questions about heat islands and provides related information and resources.
• Related Links contains links to sites with information and other resources related to urban heat islands, organized by topic.
• EPA's Heat Island Newsletter keeps you informed with periodic announcements of funding opportunities, webcasts, publications, and events of interest to the urban heat island community. To sign up for the newsletter, please complete and submit the signup form.
• Glossary