This article is over 5 years old

Houston Matters

How Heat Affects The Milk Cows Make — And Other Consequences Of Rising Temps

NPR’s Nathan Rott explains how rising temperatures are affecting life across the country, and the Texas state climatologist discusses how it’s affecting life in Greater Houston.

| Posted on

Share

Dairy Cows
Mose Buchele/KUT
The way cows digest food takes a lot of energy and generates a lot of heat. This makes them lose their appetite and produce less milk.

Listen

To embed this piece of audio in your site, please use this code:

<iframe src="https://embed.hpm.io/1/296673" style="height: 115px; width: 100%;"></iframe>
X

While flooding is on the minds of many Houstonians, there's another, more constant, weather element affecting all of our lives: heat.

Temperatures hit triple digits Sunday in Houston. A heat advisory's in effect again today, and the National Weather Service says the heat index expected to hover between 102 and 111 degrees.

But Texas isn’t alone. NPR is overseeing a series of stories focusing on heat and rising temperatures across the nation.

Nathan Rott covers environmental issues for NPR. In the audio above, he joins Houston Matters to explain how increased heat affects the amount of milk cows produce and other consequences of rising temperatures.

Then, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon discusses how rising temperatures are affecting life in Greater Houston and the Gulf Coast region.