Extreme heat is rewriting the job of state government

Driving the news: July was the hottest month ever measured in the contiguous U.S., with every Lower 48 state above its 20th-century average — and an ongoing heat wave across much of the central and southern U.S. could extend into September.

• The speed at which states have ramped up their response to extreme heat has been "stunning," V. Kelly Turner, associate director of heat research at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, told Axios.
• "Heat's everywhere, but it's sort of fallen through the cracks," said Turner, a professor of urban planning at UCLA. "If everyone's responsible, no one's responsible."

Part of the problem, she said, is that heat historically hasn't carried the same obvious property damage price tag as disasters such as floods and wildfires, so it can attract less government funding.

• "Heat's already competing with all these other climate problems, and it doesn't have its own home; it doesn't have its own budget," she said.

Context: Massachusetts announced in August that it became the first East Coast state and second in the nation after Arizona to appoint a heat resilience officer.

• The state has warmed by nearly 3.5°F in the past century.
• Massachusetts Department of Public Health data shows there were nearly 1,500 heat-related emergency-room visits last year.
• Heat resilience officer Katie Schlick told Axios that 1 in 5 Massachusetts public schools lacks air-conditioning. Sending kids home affects their learning, she said.

State of play: Arizona's 2024 heat plan created its chief heat officer role to coordinate heat-response efforts across agencies. It also expanded heat-relief resources and deploying mobile solar-powered cooling centers made from shipping containers.

• Visits to two cooling centers at the Arizona Capitol rose 59% in summer 2025 from a year earlier, according to the state.

California has no official with such a title, but Turner said "we do have an office that is dedicated to extreme heat and a dedicated funding program that's putting a lot of money into the hands of communities to work on the problem."

• California's 2022 Extreme Heat Action Plan established what officials called the state's first "all-of-government framework" for extreme heat.

• Its updated 2026 plan spans public health, emergency response, housing, infrastructure, energy and worker protections.
• A separate law will require cities and counties to address extreme heat hazards when they next update certain general plan elements on or after Jan. 1, 2028. Turner said that ultimately means "every single community" will have a clause "that says here's how we're addressing heat."

What we're watching: Schlick's initial goals for Massachusetts include reducing heat-related school closures through more cooling, building local heat-planning capacity, creating safer workplaces, and planting more trees.

• The state has identified "heat equity communities" where less tree cover, shade and green space leave residents particularly exposed, Schlick said.

Schlick doesn't know whether she'll have dedicated funding for heat initiatives and expects to draw on broader resilience investments and existing programs and partnerships.

• She wants to better quantify heat's costs — including lost work and wages, ER visits, and insurance costs — and measure which interventions are cost-effective.

The bottom line: "It's very early days in terms of heat governance," Turner said, as states figure out what an effective response looks like.

Go deeper: How Phoenix's chief heat officer is combatting rising temperatures