announcer: this is abc7news. kristen: you are watching getting answers live on abc seven. every day we talk with experts about issues important to the bay area get answers for you. we are following the latest written, the passing of queen elizabeth ii. the monarch who reigned for 70 years died this morning. before pouring in. another day of the bay area's extreme heat wave. day nine of a flex alert. the call to conserve energy. today's flex alert period is longer. 3:00 until 10:00 p.m. get to mike nicco.

this is interesting because temperatures are actually not as hot as monday and tuesday. mike: not as hot here, but definitely hotter than yesterday and that may cause us to use more electricity here in the bay area. good afternoon. the rebound we talked about yesterday, almost double digits in some neighborhoods. 82 in san francisco. 70 along the coast. near 90 in san mateo. near 100 in hayward. 100s in the south bay, north bay and east bay. record-setting temperatures right now. the weather service is updating their afternoon package. this could change between now and when we come back at 4:00. for now, the heat advisory continues through 8:00. same thing with the excessive heat warning. i am forecasting 100s in the inland east bay neighborhoods

tomorrow. that's usually not enough for the national weather service to keep a warning like this up. tomorrow will more likely be solano, lake and mendocino counties. here is how our evening unfolds. 97 at 7:00. 86 around the bay. 68 at the coast. mid-60's, mid 70's and mid 80's towards 10:00. the flex alert finally ending. our last day of suffering record heat is today. tonight will be our last night of record temperatures. cooler this weekend with less sunshine as mid-level tropical clouds come in. that is going to make it more humid. slight chance for a shower saturday and sprinkles possible sunday morning. the cooling trend will be the bigger story this weekend. tonight, a few asterisks. those are record warm low temperatures. some of us in the 50's and 60's. tomorrow, still warmer than

average. 90's to near 100 and the south bay. the peninsula, low to upper 80's. cooler at the coast tomorrow. 71 in daly city. load upper 70's across south san francisco. a lot of 90's in the north bay. 100s north of calistoga. 70's for richmond and berkeley. 80's elsewhere. here's the wealth of 100 and where the air will be dangerous. there's no spare the air tomorrow. we have been keeping an eye on hurricane k. it is going to go right up to our border with mexico, then turned south. it will be close enough that thunderstorms are possible all the way up to places like fresno , south lake tahoe and santa barbara. here's a look at the rain. this rain could mean wind damage out of the same storms. even mudslides and flooding.

for us, pretty much nothing measurable unless we get a rogue thunderstorm saturday and sprinkles sunday morning. look at the significant drop in temperatures. 70's and 80's saturday. 90's try to pop up sunday and monday. even cooler next week, more like autumn should be. one more day of heat inland. kristen: hang in there, folks. a reminder of what you can do right now to preserve power. if you have ac, set your thermostat to 78 or higher. do not charge your electric car or use major appliance like the dishwasher, electric oven or stove. turn off lights you are not using. during a flex alert, you need to be on top of that and turn off any unnecessary lights. every little bit helps. we will have more on that later. we want to get to today's other top story, the death of queen elizabeth. mourners have gathered at

buckingham palace. it is nightfall there now. flags have been lowered to half staff. her majesty passed away hours after the palace announced she was under medical supervision. prince charles, her son, now king. he is currently at balmoral castle and will return to london tomorrow. >> queen elizabeth ii, raining over the united kingdom since 1952. born elizabeth alexander mary windsor on april 21, 1926. lilibet, as she was known to close family, was never expected to be queen. that changed in 1936 when her father unexpectedly became king george after his older brother's abdication. she won public admiration by doing her part during world war ii, training as a truck driver and mechanic.

on her 21st birthday, taking on the mantle of public service. >> my life come along more shirt -- shall be devoted to the service of our great imperial family. >> she lifted a gloomy country's spirits when she married philip just a few years after the war, becoming a mother for the first time. prince charles, born in 1948, the first of their four children and first in line to the throne. after battling illness, her father died while she was abroad in kenya in 1952. the 25-year-old princess was now queen. her coronation, the first to be televised from westminster abbey, watched by millions around the world. she worked with 15 prime ministers, starting with winston churchill, and met 13 american presidents, including president biden. there were low moments. >> [indiscernible]

>> 1992, elizabeth faced a troublesome year. which brought the collapse of three of her children's marriages and a devastating fire at her home. 1997, the death of princess diana in a car crash. a public backlash after it took the queen several days to publicly pay tribute to her former daughter-in-law. in more recent times, prince andrew embroiled in a sex scandal, rocking the monarchy. the royal family's turbulent relationship with pins -- prince harry plus wife. through it all, the queen remaining this deity -- the steady center of her family. philip, her husband of 73 years until his death. we elizabeth managed to reign in a modern world without compromising tradition. she dies the longest reigning british sovereign in history. ♪

kristen: abc's coverage of the death of queen elizabeth continues tonight. at 8:00, george stephanopoulos will anchor a special report. at 9:00, queen elizabeth ii, a royal life, a special edition of 20/20. we will have much more on elizabeth's reign and life on our streaming apps. we've got the latest developments and a special highlighting the queen's visit to the bay area in the 1980's. you can download the app now for roku, apple tv and more. next, we turn our attention back to the heatwave. could it go down as the worst ever in history? or, are some aspects typical? an expert joins us to explain what is driving the heat and its impact o

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kristen: this is an unprecedented ninth day of a flex alert when we are encouraged to conserve energy during that heatwave. we want to dig into the cause of the heatwave and its impact on wildfires. joining us live is patrick brown, codirector of climate net energy at the breakthrough institute in berkeley. thanks for your time. >> thanks a lot. kristen: we want for this heatwave to be done. it is a good time to assess what we are experiencing. how historic, unusual, epic was this? >> in climate science, we talk

about three aspects of heat waves. their extent, how large they are, their duration and their intensity. the accent is more or less typical of what we see in these west coast heatwave spirit the duration is the notable aspect of this heatwave. in some locations, substantially elevated temperatures for about two weeks, which is unusual. the intensity as well is a major factor. a lot of locations saw their all-time record high temperatures fall during this heatwave. we saw 117 in some locations. climate change is really driving the intensity aspect of it. as it gets warmer, we expect basically all temperatures to get warmer. that means heatwave's get warmer. we calculate that the hottest temperatures in california this time of year should be warming

about 10% to 20% faster than the global average. when we talk global average, we talk the paris agreement of staying below two degrees celsius by the end of the century. you can do some simple math to convert that and figure out that it, ok, that means the 117 we saw this week, that would have been about a 115 at preindustrial climate and we would expect that to be those are to 121 -- at the end of the century. that is about the range we are talking in terms of climate change's impact on intensity. kristen: the baseline is higher so when you get a key wave, that is higher. let me ask you to go back and talk about california and globally. are you saying we are warming up faster than the rest of the world? >> the land warms faster than the oceans.

just from that alone, most where everyone lives, on land, is warming faster than the global average. if you just look at the hottest temperatures, how fast hotter temperatures are warming, that is that 10% to 15% increase relative to the global average. we do see that on the extreme side of the distribution. a little bit faster warming than global average. kristen: talk about the impact on wildfires and our risk for wildfires. we have always had them, more in recent years. the mosquito fire near sacramento, talk about how this heatwave may have contributed. >> in fire science, we have to use the shorthand hot, dry, windy, the conditions favorable for wildfires. this heatwave is hot and dry. when it is hot, especially this time of year, that basically

means drive because the atmosphere can hold more moisture. these temperatures can suck moisture out of the vegetation. where the mosquito fire is right now, they have critically dry fuel. we have what is called 100 our dead fuel moisture, a technical term but it is a measure of the moisture in sticks. that is below 10%, which is the critical threshold where fire danger becomes much larger. this heatwave contributed to that. when you have exceptional heat for a number of days, that dries out the fuel and makes ignition more likely. it makes it more likely for fires to spread in an uncontrollable way. that does not go away when the heat goes away. the fuels will remain dry afterwards until you get more moisture. kristen: how about the impact in

terms of longer duration, on our electrical grid? today, the ninth day of a flex alert, they are having to call for that alert from 3:00 until 10:00. that is a longer period than ever before even though our temperatures are not as hot. >> the more days you have where you are very close to these thresholds of supply of energy not being able to meet demand, the more days you have of that, the more like something else can go wrong like a power generation plant can go out. and then you are in big trouble. the duration affects things that way. that is another aspect of why this heatwave is historical. we set an all-time demand record for the state on tuesday. so, this is something we have to adapt to as it gets warmer because it is going to continue to get warmer no matter what happens on the reducing

emissions side for at least three decades. kristen: when you say adapt, how? >> we are working on that. the electric grid, for example. in august, 2020 when we had rolling blackouts, there was not nearly as much battery power on the grid. we have been adapting by puttering battery pout -- putting battery power on the grid so we can move solar energy from the middle of the day towards the peak demand time at around 5:38 p.m. that's the type of thing, adapting the electrical grid to the possibility of these much larger demand spikes and has -- as more people adopt going forward. kristen: i wonder if we will start to live differently. you go to singapore or malaysia, people go out at night when it is finally cooler, instead of the day.

are we going to see our behavior shift? are we going to need to? >> i think so. i have looked at this in the literature that looks at mortality rates associated with temperature. those very vastly across the world depending on how -- what the local climate is. in a location that is not used to warm temperatures, you are in much greater danger of getting sick or dying if it is warm. if you are in a location that is used to it, the sensitivity to that is much less. people try to figure out exactly why that is. is it just that there is more air-conditioning? it does not seem like that. it does seem it is behavioral, learned experiences of people acclimating in other ways. kristen: i can't let you go without asking you the ultimate question, will this go down in history as the worst heatwave

ever? some scientists think perhaps. others say no way, the worst is yet to come. >> every single year, the baseline is warming. we absolutely expect to break these records further going forward. we hear a lot about, on the mitigation side of climate change, reducing emissions. the big stories right now, california banning new sales of content -- of internal combustion engine vehicles. that is part of the story, but that is a slow, global process. that is really not going to have any impact on our temperature trajectory until at least the 20 40's or 20 60's. it is going to continue to get warmer into these records will fall. kristen: we needed to have started 50 years ago. better late than never. thank you for your time today. >> definitely.

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kristen: although san francisco tends to be cooler thanks to its location, these days even the city by the bay is suffering more heatwave spirit city leaders are doing something about it by assessing which neighborhoods are heat islands. pockets most vulnerable to extreme temperatures. joining us to talk more about a new mapping project, carmen shoe. >> great to see you. kristen: thanks. what are heat islands? >> we started an initiative through a grant provided by the national oceanic and met -- and atmospheric administration.

we sent out 30 volunteers across the city to map the data about how humid and hot different parts of our city are. to live in the city, you know we've got microclimates. some neighborhoods are extremely hot, others are in a blanket of fog. in order to understand with the environment looks like and what tree canopies and buildings do to the temperatures and humidity of our neighborhoods is important to help us make smart investments. kristen: this is not something you ever thought the city would have to worry about. but that is our reality. tell us more about this first round of mapping. i understand volunteers actually drove around as the heatwave was getting underway last week? tell us what they did. >> we had 30 volunteers who took different routes at three different times of the day. they drove all across the city and had these -- attached to

their vehicles. as they were driving, the air would flow through a capturing data about how hot it was and how humid it was. to be able to really map out whatever city feels like, especially during the heatwave. we all know this past week we have at a pretty hot you days. being able to capture that was great. in san francisco, we don't tend to think things get too hot, but we have seen extreme temperatures. we had 106 degrees several years ago. it is not unusual. with climate change, we expect marquee heat events to occur. being able to map this out so we know where to put our cooling centers, knowing where b can grow trees and invest in infrastructure to help us be more resilient, it's going to be important to saving lives. kristen: tell us what they discovered. what does the data tell you? were there neighborhoods where there temperatures were that much hotter? could you tell why?

>> the are collecting data now. all of the cars, all of the data is going to be analyzed then we will be able to share the report as quick as we can. what we do know is that we do not feel heat in an even way across the city. parts of our city have more tree canopy, green space. other parts of our city have a lot of concrete, a lot of buildings that create heat pockets. we all know the terrain of san francisco. we have a hilly city. sometimes heat, air, other parts of the environment gets trapped in such a way that creates hotter pockets in our city than other places. especially when we are talking about people who are more -- people who are more vulnerable to heat sensitivities like seniors, we want to be able to understand how we map out what people experience on the ground to our -- and as a city, think smarter about where we put our

resources to helping during heat events. kristen: you mentioned the elderly, are you going to take the heat data and marriott with people data to find out the best solutions? >> absolutely. this initiative is not just part of a resiliency effort, it is also a collaboration between different departments. public health, emergency management, department or the environment, community partners. we really want to be able to marry that data about heat and humidity with the people data. making sure we understand where do we have vulnerable communities, where we have natural public resources to serve as cooling centers, then being able to make smart choices about how we make investments for the future. wrist encode the solution may be different from neighborhood to neighborhood. if you have kids, you may need more swimming pools. maybe streets with more canopies. keep us posted, carmen chu.

>> thank you. kristen: from hot temperatures to a hot deal, we want to let you know there's a special offer day to celebrate disney plus day. you can stream for one month for just $1.99. that's for new and returning subscribers. disney

kristen: thanks for joining us today. if you are streaming us, stay here. we are going to stream next from the abc7 archives special about queen elizabeth's last visit to the bay area. if you are watching us on tv, the world news tonight with

david muir is next. tonight, queen elizabeth ii has died at 96. prince charles assuming the throne as king charles iii. the u.s. and the world paying respects. a symbol of strength and british resolve, the uk's longest serving ignnning years. buckingham p the queen died peacefully at her home in scotland. buckingham palace staff posting the notice. the news coming just hours after the palace released a rare statement, saying doctors were concerned about her health. the royal family rushing to scotland to be by her side. charles releasing his first statement as the new king. calling the death of his mother a moment of greatest sadness. more than 80% of britons were born with elizabeth as their queen. the