Cooling center

A cooling center is an air-conditioned public or private space to temporarily deal with the adverse health effects of extreme heat weather conditions, like the ones caused by heat waves. Cooling centers are one of the possible mitigation strategies to prevent hyperthermia caused by heat, humidity, and poor air quality.

As the danger of heat waves has risen in the public consciousness, cooling centers are increasingly used in larger cities such as Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Boston, and Toronto, as well as less urban population areas. Cooling centers may also be used in places like Portland and Seattle where home air conditioning is rare but summer can bring temperatures exceeding 90 °F (32 °C) for several days. Similarly, during the 2018 heat wave and fires that reached northern Scandinavia, a supermarket in Finland was temporarily used as a cooling center.

As various studies have projected more intense, more frequent, and longer-lasting heat waves in the future, many state and federal governments in the US would be including cooling centers as part of their heat adaptation strategy and warning system.