Making heat visible through interdisciplinary research

Interdisciplinarity is recognised as key when researching climate extremes, including extreme heat. This is because understanding and reducing risk from these climate extremes requires the intersection of several research areas that encompass the physical hazard and the social aspects. Extreme heat is different from other climate extremes, because the multitude of considerations aren’t always obvious from the outset. Extreme heat arrives quietly. There are no howling winds, no pouring rain, or raging waters. The impacts of heat can be hidden and the causes invisible when you don’t know what to look out for. It is precisely the ‘silent’ and ‘invisible’ nature of heat that make the importance of an interdisciplinary approach vital, to ensure key considerations are not missed.

While it is hard to encompass and expand on all the research areas for extreme heat, I have attempted to split these into five broad, non-exhaustive, research areas that need to be considered. First, there is climate science and meteorology that helps us model and understand the physical drivers behind extreme heat conditions. This understanding allows us to forecast regions likely to experience extreme heat and develop longer-term projections for how these conditions may change under global warming. Second, there is health research on the impact of extreme heat on our bodies. This research analyses how extreme heat can lead to health impacts such as heat stroke and death and how these vary throughout the population to highlight who is most vulnerable. This is closely related to the third research area of social science which seeks to understand how factors such as social inequalities, housing, and access to cooling determine who suffers most, and explores possible culturally appropriate adaptation options. The fourth interconnected research area is urban planning and engineering, which advances understanding of appropriate heat resilient infrastructure, and where infrastructure may exacerbate ‘hotspots’ for extreme heat. Finally, research into policy and governance explores how best to communicate risk from heat and informs heat action plans, warning systems, and regulations, while ensuring that these are equitable and enforceable to reduce risk from heat for everyone.

These five areas are interconnected and need to be considered together. However, the million-dollar question is: how do we actually do this? From my current experience on an interdisciplinary research project on climate extremes, with a focus on extreme heat, I suggest four starting points:

1. Language: Different disciplines communicate differently. To work in an interdisciplinary way, you need to break through communication barriers and ensure you have mutual understanding. This is particularly vital in agreeing what the problem or focus of research is. To combat this, research questions can be defined across interdisciplinary teams. Sometime the same term can mean something different in different disciplines and this is not obvious until it is explicitly stated. Creating a shared glossary can identify these ambiguous terms and help create a shared understanding.
   

2. Methods: To work in an interdisciplinary way different methods that not everyone in the team will be familiar with, need to be integrated. This is what differentiates interdisciplinary work from multidisciplinary work. While team members cannot be expected to become experts in every methodology, making an effort to understand each other’s approaches and results will strengthen the integration of the research and promote active participation from all researchers throughout the project.
   

3. Inclusion of varied stakeholders and communities: Including non-academic partners from the outset of the project can ensure that multiple perspectives are considered. Diverse perspectives help ensure that key considerations don’t slip through the cracks and that the research can be as impactful as possible to stakeholders and more broadly. This makes the project transdisciplinary as well as interdisciplinary.
   

4. Supportive funding and research design: Before commencing the research, it can be useful to note which funding mechanisms actively support interdisciplinarity through more than just lip service. Examples of incorporating funding for some of the activities above include allocations for: workshops for researchers to develop shared understanding and co-creation of knowledge, funding for training researchers on diverse methodologies, engagement activities with stakeholders, and explicitly allotted time within the project timeline to do these activities effectively.

Additionally, interdisciplinary research on heat goes beyond individual projects. Due to the multitude of considerations within extreme heat research, from a wide array of disciplines, it is difficult for one project to include everything. However, an attitude of good-faith collaboration can foster openness with other researchers. Through research networks such as this, we can combat a vital shared problem: reducing risk from current and future extreme heat.