Extreme Heat
Clip: Episode 3 | 2m 26sVideo has Closed Captions
Extreme heat is the deadliest climate issue, and scientists struggle to cool things off.
Extreme heat is the deadliest climate disaster, and scientists struggle to cool things down. Physiologist Ollie Jay is tackling the issue in Sydney, Australia, trying to create low-cost cooling strategies for people most at risk: those without air conditioning and the unhoused. He puts Miles O’Brien in the hot seat, literally, to experience a body system failing to regulate itself.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Made possible in part by support provided by Sue Hart-Wadley and Searle Wadley with additional support from Jerry Cox.
Extreme Heat
Clip: Episode 3 | 2m 26sVideo has Closed Captions
Extreme heat is the deadliest climate disaster, and scientists struggle to cool things down. Physiologist Ollie Jay is tackling the issue in Sydney, Australia, trying to create low-cost cooling strategies for people most at risk: those without air conditioning and the unhoused. He puts Miles O’Brien in the hot seat, literally, to experience a body system failing to regulate itself.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Where to Watch Resolve to Solve with Miles O'Brien
Resolve to Solve with Miles O'Brien is available to stream on pbs.org and the PBS app.
O'BRIEN: At the iconic Sydney Opera House, I met a scientist looking for an answer.
Ollie Jay runs the Heat and Health Research Center at the University of Sydney.
Lay the context for us a little bit on Australia, its climate, and the heat impacts you deal with here.
We have an increased prevalence of heat waves.
They're greater intensity, the maximum temperature records are being beaten regularly.
Among, uh, high-income countries, we're actually the most susceptible to the impacts of extreme heat on human health and well-being.
For a researcher such as yourself, trying to find solutions, ways to adapt, this is the perfect laboratory, isn't it?
JAY: Absolutely.
We take time to understand the nature of the problem before we start trying to develop solutions, because we don't want to go down that route that a lot of academics do of finding solutions to problems that don't exist.
O'BRIEN: Ollie and his team are looking for smarter, more efficient ways to keep people safe and cool as the global thermostat rises.
♪ ♪ That was on his mind when I met him on a steamy Saturday at the University of Sydney Cricket Club Oval.
(bat cracks) A match like this can last two long days, six to eight hours each.
That was big!
(cheers and applause) On the sidelines, Ollie Jay and his team were setting up a curious contraption they call the EMU.
It's a flightless Australian bird, but also something called the Environmental Measurement Unit.
O'BRIEN: Mm-hmm.
Like MaRTy in Phoenix, EMU measures four key parameters: air temperature, humidity, radiant temperature, and wind speed.
We measure temperature in this device right here.
We can move air in a certain way across that temperature sensor to get a very accurate read on what the temperature of the air is in the shade.
O'BRIEN: Humidity is measured in that same white chamber.
Above it is a copper sphere that is painted matte black.
It measures radiation that comes directly from the sun and bounces off the various surfaces surrounding an athlete.
JAY: And then using all of this information, we can model how hot someone's going to get, and therefore what their rate of dehydration might be.
And, you know, potentially how much water they need to drink in order to maintain hydration.
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Made possible in part by support provided by Sue Hart-Wadley and Searle Wadley with additional support from Jerry Cox.