What rising heat will cost Cook County
A year-by-year forecast, through 2060, of what extreme heat will cost Cook County in deaths, illness, and lost work, and a ranking of the adaptation measures that would prevent the most harm per dollar.
Extreme heat is one of the deadliest weather risks Chicago faces. The July 1995 heat wave killed an estimated 739 more people than normal in a single week, and climate projections show hot days becoming more frequent and heat waves lasting longer. Most economic forecasts still count none of the deaths, illness, or lost work that heat causes.
What will rising heat cost Cook County in health and lost productivity through 2060, and which adaptation measures return the most per dollar spent?
Based on the existing literature, we expect the health and productivity costs of rising heat to exceed the cost of the adaptation measures that would prevent them.
If the hypothesis holds, it's a dollar-for-dollar case for Chicago and Cook County to invest in heat adaptation now. Either way, the community-level ranking shows where adaptation money does the most good.
From climate data to dollars, in three phases.
Heat-related deaths, illness, and lost work are real costs that most economic forecasts leave out. We estimate them in dollars, year by year.
Project the hot days
Downscale CMIP6 climate projections to Cook County and count, for each year through 2060, the days hot enough to raise local mortality. Then sort them into heat waves and one-off hot days: three hot days in a row do more damage than three spread across a summer.
Convert to dollars
Apply established temperature-mortality estimates and EPA valuation methods to turn projected deaths, illness, and lost work hours into a dollar cost for each year.
Rank the fixes
Map where those costs land across Chicago's community areas, then compare adaptation measures by how much harm each prevents per dollar spent, community by community.
Built on: Deschênes & Greenstone (2011) on temperature and mortality in the U.S.; Peng et al. (2011) on projected heat-wave mortality in Chicago; and Carleton et al. (2022) on valuing heat deaths and the cost of adaptation.
What we're aiming to produce
- A year-by-year forecast of heat costs in Cook County through 2060
- A comparison showing how much conventional forecasts undercount those costs
- A paper submitted for peer review, plus policy recommendations for Chicago and Cook County
- A method we can reuse for other places and other climate impacts
Funding, advisors, and partners
We need people and organizations who can help get this analysis to publication-ready rigor. Funding covers compute and stipends for student researchers.
Beyond Cook County
Cook County is the test case. Once the method works, we'll apply it wherever climate change carries large local costs that current models miss.
Find more projects
We'll look for problems like Cook County's heat: large, local, and missing from existing estimates.
Improve the models
Each project should leave the underlying models better: more local, more complete, and easier for others to reuse.
Share the results
A forecast is only useful if it reaches the people making decisions. These are the four groups we're building for.
Who can use these forecasts
Four groups can put these forecasts to direct use.
City & county government
Agencies get a community-by-community ranking of where adaptation spending prevents the most harm, with dollar figures they can take into budget decisions.
Insurance groups
Better estimates of future climate-driven losses can help insurers price and manage risk as conditions change.
Disaster relief & management
Forecasts of where and when impacts are likely to land let agencies plan and position resources ahead of a crisis.
Affected residents
Residents get local numbers on what heat is likely to cost their neighborhoods, which they can use when pushing for protection and investment.
Want to follow the project or get involved?
We're looking for advisors, partner organizations, and early funding, and we'd love to hear from anyone interested in the work. We'll post results here as each phase is finished.