While many Californians are moving inland in search of affordable housing and more space, they may find life isn’t greener on the other side. Some California cities with the biggest recent population booms are at risk for dangerously hot days driven by climate change and sky-high electric bills, according to a CalMatter analysis. This combination of rising populations and alarming extreme heat puts more Californians at risk of illness, posing a serious challenge for unprepared local officials.
As greenhouse gasses continue to warm the planet, many individuals across the globe are experiencing higher temperatures and intense heat waves, and an international panel of climate scientists recently stated that it is “virtually certain” that “there has been increases in the intensity and duration of heatwaves and in the number of heatwave days at the global scale.”
The CalMatters analysis identified which California communities are most at risk, with the top 1% of the state’s more than 8,000 census tracts being communities that have grown by more than 500 people in recent years and are also expected to experience the most intensifying heat due to climate change.
Identified California communities by CalMatters include Lancaster and Palmdale in Los Angeles County; Apple Valley, Victorville, and Hesperia in San Bernardino County; Lake Elsinore and Murrieta in Riverside County; and the Central Valley cities of Visalia, Fresno, Clovis, and Tulare.
Risks of Relocating Inland in California
According to data from researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Colorado Boulder, and UC Berkeley, it is expected that by 2050 neighborhoods in these 11 inland cities will experience 25 or more high heat days every year. A high heat day is defined as when an area’s maximum temperature surpasses the top 2% of its historic high—essentially when temperatures skyrocket above the highest temperatures recorded there this century.
“We are seeing much more rapid warming of inland areas that were already hotter to begin with,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.
“There’s an extreme contrast between the people who live within 5 to 10 miles of the beach and people who live as little as 20 miles inland,” he said. “It’s these inland areas where we see people who…are killed by this extreme heat or whose lives are at least made miserable.”
Despite inland California communities expected to experience higher temperatures, neighborhoods along the coast will remain much more temperate. Areas such as San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Long Beach are not expected to experience significantly more high heat days, with San Francisco expected to average six days a year in the 2050s exceeding 87 degrees, compared to four days in the 2020s. On the other hand, Visalia in the San Joaquin Valley of California will jump from 17 days surpassing 103 degrees to 32.
Eric McGhee, a policy director who researches California demographic changes at the Public Policy Institute of California, stated that many people moving inland are low and middle-income Californians looking to expand their families, find more affordable housing, and live comfortably, making them more willing to sacrifice other privileges, like cooler weather.
California is “becoming more expensive, more exclusive in the places that are least likely to experience extreme heat,” Swain said. As a result, he said, “the people who are most at risk of extreme heat”—those with limited financial resources—“are precisely the people experiencing extreme heat.”
Impact of Extreme Heat on California’s Population
The effects of extreme heat on the body can happen quickly and can be deadly, triggering heat strokes and heart attacks, as well as exacerbating asthma, diabetes, kidney failure, and other illnesses in people of all ages.
In The Golden State, extreme heat contributed to more than 5,000 hospitalizations and almost 10,600 emergency department visits over the past decade, with the health effects falling “disproportionately on already overburdened” Black people, Latinos and Native Americans, according to a recent state report.
With hotter days forecasted, city and county officials must grapple with how to protect their residents who are already struggling to stay cool and pay their electric bills, but despite warnings, many local officials are failing to respond adequately.
