(The Center Square) – Over the past 55 years, Las Vegas and Reno have warmed faster than any other U.S. city.
That’s according to a recent report that looked at temperatures in 242 U.S. cities since 1970. The researchers found that Southwestern cities warmed faster than any other region, while experts explained how the issue already affected the wallets and daily lives of Nevadans.
“People make really difficult trade-offs when it’s hot here in Southern Nevada,” Ariel Choinard, who leads the Desert Research Institute’s Nevada Heat Lab, told The Center Square. “We know that people choose between paying their electricity bill for cooling and doing things like getting groceries on the table, affording medication and paying for transportation.”
Climate change costs the average American household between $400 and $900 annually. The 10% of families in the most-impacted U.S. counties pay an average of $1,300 per year due to climate change, according to a recent report published in the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Between 1970 and 2025, the average annual temperature in Reno increased by 7.9 degrees; in Las Vegas by 6 degrees. That’s according to Climate Central, a research center that examined data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administratio.
Of the 240 U.S. cities that warmed since 1970, the average increase was by 2.9 degrees. Southwestern cities in the study have warmed by 3.5 degrees on average.
Kaitlyn Trudeau, a climate scientist for Climate Central, which conducted the warming cities study, said the nationwide warming was a result of human-caused climate change by emitting greenhouse gases.
Despite political debate over climate change, the issue has been widely accepted to be an ongoing phenomenon in recent years by both experts and the general population.
More than two-thirds of Americans (69%) agreed climate change is happening, with 63% of the country saying they were worried about the issue, according to a 34,000-person 2025 Yale report. Trudeau said many Americans do not voice climate concerns for fear that their neighbors do not feel the same way, despite the likelihood that they do.
Reno, Las Vegas and other Southwestern cities are more likely to see big temperature increases than other regions for several reasons, according to Trudeau. One issue is the region’s hot and dry climate, which is more exposed to temperature changes than humid areas.
Another is that some Southwestern cities, such as Las Vegas, have seen unprecedented population booms over the past 50 years, with new infrastructure to accommodate that growth trapping in heat more than the natural environment would, Trudeau said. She noted infrastructure such as parking lots and roads are some of the biggest contributors to the warming of cities, holding heat and warming the surrounding city in what climate researchers call the urban heat island effect.
These effects can most often be seen in poorer neighborhoods, according to Choinard.
“In Las Vegas – and this tends to hold true across the nation – the neighborhoods that are most impacted by heat tend to be those neighborhoods that are most socioeconomically strained,” Choinard told The Center Square.
Choinard said that over 500 people died in Clark County, home to Las Vegas, in the summer of 2024 from heat-related incidents, with the hottest neighborhoods in Las Vegas up to 11 degrees warmer than the city’s coolest neighborhoods.
The comparatively cooler 2025 heat wave caused 250 deaths, according to the National Weather Service.
“Heat is the deadliest natural hazard here in Southern Nevada, across the state, across the U.S., and across the world,” said Choinard.
Extreme heat is the most deadly weather event in the U.S. according to the weather service.
“It takes more lives than tornadoes, than hurricanes – than any other natural hazard out there,” Choinard said. “I think the challenge with heat is that it doesn’t have that same sort of dramatic effect on infrastructure.”
But experts say that for many people, climate change has caused a sense of hopelessness. The American Psychiatric Association found that more than one-third of American adults worry about climate change weekly, with 40% saying it is impacting their mental health in a 2025 survey of more than 2,000 Americans.
“It is something that is overwhelming, that is scary, and I don’t want to discount that at all, but I don’t think there we’re at the point to give up hope,” said Trudeau, who added that she sometimes feels pessimistic about the issue herself. “There are solutions. We just have to really get on the same page and then decide how we want to move forward.”
Solutions range from large-scale cutting of carbon emissions, largely by cars and energy production, to local efforts to paint roofs white as a way to reflect more heat. Trudeau said the effort should be tackled from all angles.
Climate advocates have expressed concern that local, state and national efforts have often not effectively worked together on the issue. In February, the Trump administration reversed a 2009 Environmental Protection Agency finding that said climate change was a threat to public health. President Donald Trump has also called climate change “a scam.”
Meanwhile, some local Nevada governments have been praised for their climate-related efforts.
“Certainly Clark County is a model that you can hold up as a local government that’s taking action to tackle this problem,” said George Cavros, a Nevada energy expert for the Western Resource Advocates.
Cavros told The Center Square that the county’s All-In program, which has made a point to meet a number of climate-related metrics, including expanding renewable energy use and more sustainable water usage.
Choinard also praised Clark County’s climate program, but said local efforts, especially as it relates to heat, did not start until recently.
Nevada currently ranks near the middle for renewable energy use at No. 18 among the 50 states, according to a U.S. News & World Report ranking.
“Nevada was once a leader on clean energy, and we’ve been losing ground quickly on curbing heat-trapping emissions in Nevada,” said Cavros. He added that much of the issue has come from the high demand and costs associated with data centers in the state, which have been seen as a driving force for the economy in recent years.
The pressure to address climate change comes as prices across the economy continue to rise and the costs to invest in renewable energy and other preventative measures for climate change remain expensive.
“People will say, ‘Well, it’s so expensive. We don’t have the money for this.’ And it’s true, it is expensive,” said Trudeau. “But it will never be cheaper than it is right now. The longer we delay, the harder it’s going to be. It may be more expensive in the short term, but long term, it is so much more expensive to not address it.”
