As the heat soars, dangers mount in Sydney’s parks and playgrounds

In the state’s far west, the temperature was oppressive on Monday, reaching well into the 40s as residents braced for the prospect of Australian heat records being shattered, and waited for a cool change that was promised to blow in from South Australia sometime after dark.

In Sydney, temperatures were far more moderate, but even without the blast of the inland heat or the thick humidity that closed in on the city’s eastern suburbs, scientists found surface temperatures at the play area at Doyle Ground in Parramatta were hot enough to cause a young child serious injury.

A thermal camera image of Professor Sebastian Pfautsch among play equipment at Doyle Ground in North Parramatta.Credit: James Brickwood

Sometime after lunch, Professor Sebastian Pfautsch, an expert in urban planning at the University of Western Sydney who has been gathering data on the growing dangers of heat in our sprawling city, took a reading off the surface of a piece of gym equipment. It was 98 degrees – easily enough to burn a child’s hand.

Pfautsch is collaborating with colleagues from UNSW on a study called “Too Hot To Play”, trying to find out at which temperatures Sydney’s parks empty as children and carers are driven indoors. So far, the data is grim.

“Today in Sydney, it is not a heatwave, it is just a beautiful summer’s day, but sadly it is dangerous,” said Pfautsch as he gathered readings at the park with colleagues.

Pfautsch, from Western Sydney University, is quantifying the impacts of urban heat on playgrounds around Sydney.Credit: James Brickwood

He recorded dangerous temperatures on a range of surfaces in the park, including the soft rubber matting beneath play equipment as well as bark mulch, concrete and bricks nearby. Even the bare earth where grass had withered in the sun was too hot for small children.

“If you are a little toddler, and you fall in this playground right now, on your hands, and you try to push yourself up, and you’re on your hands for about five seconds, on that material, you start to see burns. It is definitely dangerous,” he said.

Worse, the heat radiating out of all those surfaces means that the lower to the ground, the hotter it becomes, which in turn means that toddlers gambolling at their parents’ waists are experiencing higher temperatures.

Pfautsch’s research is not yet complete, yet his observations to date make him think that people will spend time in a park until it reaches about 30 degrees; after that, they retreat indoors. This means that a temperature increase of one or two degrees can drastically reduce the amount of space young children and their carers can use in the city, and he fears for what this means as climate change intensifies.

By 2060, western Sydney might be facing an unbearable 100 to 160 days above 35 degrees in summer, Pfautsch predicts in a new paper published in the journal Weather and Climate Extremes.

In such circumstances, parks like the one he visited today and large parts of our cities, would only be bearable with far more planting, removal of dark, heat-absorbent surfaces and use of irrigation systems. Everything needs to become greener and wetter, he says.

According to that research, the heat battering Sydney and south-eastern Australia is already being accelerated by climate change. While in the first 120 years of records, 351 hot days were identified, 478 hot days were recorded between 2000 and 2020 alone, it says.

High temperatures across much of Australia at present have been caused by a high-pressure system over central Australia, where cloudless skies over the dry interior have allowed temperatures to build up over an extended period, says Monash University’s Dr Ailie Gallant.

Riccardo Paolini from UNSW and Mrs Mahya Parchami, a PhD student at UNSW, are part of the playground study.Credit: James Brickwood

Like Pfautsch, she believes Australians are already being hit by climate change.

Over recent years, the La Nina weather conditions have masked the growing climate heat. Now, without a La Nina reducing temperatures “the climate gloves are off”, says Gallant.

“This is just a manifestation of that. You know, heatwaves happen, but they’re going to become – and are becoming already – longer, hotter and more intense and more frequent.”

High temperatures and especially slow-moving heatwaves are already the most lethal extreme weather phenomenon Australia faces, she said.

Globally, 2024 is on track to be the hottest post-industrial year and the first in which temperatures have been 1.5 degrees higher than average, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s weather service. Its data shows November 2024 was the second-hottest November on record after last November.

Infrared image shows how hot playground equipment becomes on a summer day in Parramatta.Credit: Sebastian Pfautsch

The Bureau of Meteorology predicts the intense heat will recede across South Australia and Victoria, but remain high across large parts of NSW, including Sydney, on Tuesday before a southerly buster causes temperatures to fall by between five and 15 degrees later in the day.

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