Research to continue into where Thunder Bay’s ‘heat islands’ are

THUNDER BAY — Researchers at Confederation College are partnering with the City of Thunder Bay to map out precise temperature and other environmental readings throughout the city in the summer months.

That data and its analysis, said representatives from the research side of the project as well as the city, can be used to help guide how Thunder Bay plans the construction of new public spaces or renovations to existing ones, with an eye on reducing heat, especially on vulnerable populations.

“We got a good collection of data points from all over the area too,” said Maddyson Bouvier, the project lead for the heat island project between Confederation College and the city’s CityStudio initiative, adding that those data points included gathering areas like bus stops, city parks, splash pads, skate parks and others.

“Ones that are even closer to the airport, ones that are closer to the marina, ones that have more … trees, more vegetative cover around them as well.”

The research involved Bouvier and two other students at the college using portable sensor equipment that can measure conditions such as temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, barometric pressure, heat stress index, dewpoint and canopy cover, they said. Readings were taken at 276 locations between July 26 and September 18, 2024. At each location, temperatures were taken for the air, the pavement and grass.

The goal, Bouvier added, was to collate all the data and effectively map out the city’s “heat islands” — or areas of concentrated higher temperatures caused by the extra heat retained and radiated by asphalt, concrete and other building materials, and that’s not mitigated by vegetation and canopy cover.

Bus stops, Bouvier said, were a key focus, as were areas where vulnerable populations frequent.

With the rise in overall temperatures due to climate change, they added, keeping this type of data in mind when planning how public spaces will look and function is important.

“It’s kind of becoming more apparent (in) people's eyes, all these things that we just haven't really put too much care into before.”

For the city, having this breadth of data is important, said Jacob Porter, the city’s climate adaptation coordinator.

“Ideally, using this information will help us identify what things can we do as a municipality to help reduce the impacts of this extreme heat on the citizens of Thunder Bay,” Porter said, adding that exposure to high heat can be very dangerous and often underestimated.

“It especially causes issues for people who are young or older (or) who have chronic health conditions,” he said. “When we are planning public spaces, we want to plan considering the populations who are going to be using the space.”

Porter said those planning decisions could include constructing shade structures, targeting areas for tree planting or considering what is being built in a given area in the first place.

As an example of how unshaded surfaces can hold on to heat, Bouvier pointed to a pair of temperature data sets. One was taken at a site on Walsh Street between Brown Street and Waterloo Street on Aug. 2 and the readings showed an air temperature of 36.8 C, the grass was measured at 42.3 C and the pavement came in at 50.1 C. Then, on Aug. 13 at a site on Red River Road between High Street and Kenogami Avenue, the air temperature was measured at 29.5 C, but the grass came in at 50.5 C and the pavement was at 47 C.

The dry conditions the city and surrounding area experienced last summer, Bouvier said, likely contributed to the heat retention in the grass, especially later in summer.

Bouvier said the initiative will continue after they complete their studies at Confederation College.

“I think that the fact that we got as many data points as we were able to get —we have so much data that (the city) can use it for … different things if they want to,” they said, adding that examining green roofs could be one idea.

“The summer students will take over this project and continue to get these data points as well,” Bouvier continued. “We were very strict about how we were collecting it.”

“We took pictures of each of our sites so that in future years we can get the same data and then compare it even further.”