Seattle's back-to-school cooling demand is way up
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Seattle classrooms need more cooling during back-to-school season now compared with past decades, a new Climate Central analysis finds.
Why it matters: A comfortable and healthy environment in schools for kids, who are among the most vulnerable to heat-related illness, is key to educational success, says the nonprofit climate research group.
- But maintaining a comfortable environment is harder with a warming climate and deferred costly maintenance at aging schools.
Driving the news: The Climate Central report finds that cooling demand between late July and early September increased in 95% of nearly 250 U.S. locations between 1970 and 2023.
- The nonprofit climate research group's analysis is based on a metric called "cooling degree days" (CDD), which measures the difference between a location's daily average outdoor temperature and 65° — "considered the ideal indoor temperature," per the report.
- "For example, a day with an average temperature of 90°F has 25 CDD (90°- 65°)."
Context: Heat waves in Seattle are getting hotter and lasting longer, with the average length of heat waves increasing 2.1 days between 1961 and 2023, according to the EPA.
- That's longer than the national average of 1.4 days, per the data.
Threat level: Many schools in Washington start in early September, when heat waves can still strike.
What they did: To get annual demand, CDD was added for every day in the seven-week period when students typically return to school.
By the numbers: Seattle saw a 152% increase in back-to-school cooling days between 1970 and 2023.
- Reno, Nevada (+320%); Eureka, California (+300%); and San Francisco (+240%) saw the biggest percentage increases.
The big picture: Back-to-school cooling demand was around 34% higher nationwide over the last decade largely due to human-caused climate change, Climate Central estimates.
- That's based on the group's Climate Shift Index, which seeks to measure how climate change has affected daily temperatures.
What's next: Like other buildings, schools must adapt to a changing climate — and that can mean costly upgrades.