Mark Woods: Changes in latitude? No, it just feels like we're not moving closer to equator.

I moved to Florida on a glorious December day in 1988, the windows of a Toyota Tercel rolled down, the air whipping through my car and maybe even through my hair. I had more back then.

At one point on the drive, I might’ve even put in a cassette tape of Jimmy Buffett’s “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.”

For me, this was the latest in a string of changes in latitude, each one southward, ever since I was in fifth grade and my parents gave me no choice but to move to St. Paul, Minnesota (just shy of 45 degrees north), where I walked a mile to school in the bitter cold, always uphill and against a headwind. Not that I ever mentioned this to my Florida-born daughter.

A few years later my parents moved us a bit south, to northern Wisconsin (44 degrees north). And when I left home, I kept heading south, to towns in Indiana (41) and Missouri (38) and finally, on that December day, to Melbourne, Florida (28).

I half-joked that the next stop was going to be writing for the Key West Citizen.

My wife, Toni, and I did honeymoon in Key West (24.5). We lived in Orlando (28.5) and Tampa (27.9) and — after a brief stint in Kentucky (38) reminded us not so much about cold, but about grey and rainy days — moved back to Florida, to Broward County (26.1).

South Florida changed my attitude about latitude.

I still nodded in understanding when other transplants said things like, “You don’t have to shovel sunshine.” Memories of winter stick with you like frostbite.

But for the first time, I found myself saying: This is too hot.

It wasn’t just summer. It was that summer was seemingly endless. And not in a good way. I distinctly remember getting up one morning in what was supposedly late fall, heading out the door before dawn to meet friends for a run, feeling a blast of soggy air and seeing the temperature gauge already said: 82 degrees.

I also remember coming to Jacksonville about that time for a Florida-Georgia game and being struck by how the morning air actually felt cool, how summer let go a bit sooner in this part of the state and how, I realized after other visits, it had a nice mix of seasons. Not too cold, not too hot for too long.

In 2001, on a chilly February day, I moved to Jacksonville (30.3) for a lot of different reasons beyond a job at the Times-Union. I liked the size of the city, a mix of big city and small town, the river running through it, the oak trees, the beaches, the parks — and the climate.

A couple of decades later, I’d still say that most days. I still don’t want to go back to shoveling snow. But this summer has been something else. It has reminded me of South Florida. It has made me frequently fantasize about mountain towns.

I thought maybe I just had forgotten how hot it was in past summers. Or maybe that heat is affecting me more now that somehow I officially became a senior this summer. (One positive: I was able to purchase the lifetime National Parks pass.)

But I know it’s not just me.

Scientists say July likely was the earth’s hottest month ever, with the single hottest day ever.

This comes after a June that was the hottest June ever.

It has been so hot for so long that the water off Key Largo was measured at 101.1 degrees — the highest sea surface temperature ever recorded.

And on one of those scorching July days, the city with the highest heat index in America was Jacksonville.

While that might have been a bit of an anomaly, rising temperatures in Jacksonville are not.

Feels like ... moving toward equator

Adam Rosenblatt, a University of North Florida assistant professor of biology, recently gave a presentation to Scenic Jacksonville about climate change.

Last year Rosenblatt partnered with the city of Jacksonville — and with dozens of volunteers — to do a heat-mapping study of about 400 square miles of the city. The findings illustrated how widely the temperature can vary from one area to the next. And as hot as it was last year, it has been even hotter this year.

He noted that in Jacksonville we had our hottest January day ever this year (Jan. 30), followed by our hottest February ever — and that not only have we been breaking records this summer, we can expect to keep breaking them in the future.

He pointed out that in the 1950s, it was rare for Jacksonville to have more than 40 days per year when the temperature topped 95. Now that’s basically summer just getting warmed up. And when you factor in humidity, our heat index frequently tops 105.

“Going back to the 1970s, Jacksonville experienced about three days per year on average where the heat index was above 105,” he said. “If we continue on the current climate change pathway, by the middle of this century we're looking at 46 days per year. And by the end of this century, we're looking at 91 days per year.”

If we reach that level, he said, we’d have a more equatorial climate, closer to that currently found on the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America — which is at a latitude of about 18 degrees north.

“But there are solutions,” he said.

Rosenblatt emphasizes that while we shouldn’t forget the “big one” — the need to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases — we also need to adapt to what is already happening.

There are things the city of Jacksonville is doing immediately to bring temporary relief, particularly to the most vulnerable — like opening “cooling centers” around town this week.

But there are other things we can do to lower the outside thermostat, or at least prevent it from rising as quickly. Rosenblatt pointed to the difference “urban greening” can make and, as one example, repeated something that has been a common refrain for many in town: stop planting palm trees.

This isn’t South Florida, even if we’re headed in that direction.

Plant oak trees, for shade and stormwater management. Revise zoning laws to do things like require more greenspace. Rethink how we build a city.

It isn’t just about making a place look pretty. It's about making it livable.

During the study last year, he used a thermal camera to take images from around Jacksonville. An example of what it illustrated: At the asphalt of Lot J next to the stadium, the temperature was 110 degrees. At the former Landing site, still completely unshaded but not asphalt, the highest temperature recorded was 98 degrees. And across the street from the stadium, in the shade of some trees in the WJCT parking lot, the temperature of the pavement was 81 degrees.

Coming this fall: city resilience report

For more than a year, Anne Coglianese — the city’s first chief resilience officer — and her team have been working on developing a comprehensive resilience strategy for the city. The final document is expected to be completed in late September. It will include ideas for dealing with heat.

By the time it is released to the public, we may have reached one of my favorite days in the year — the one when you walk outside one morning and, for the first time in months, it doesn’t feel like a sauna.

Once that day arrives, it’s only a matter of time until we’re enjoying our version of winter, watching images of snowstorms in the rest of the country. That’s when it’s easy to forget just how hot it was in the summer.

We shouldn’t.

When we talk about resiliency, we often tend to focus on hurricanes and flooding. That’s obviously important. But we shouldn’t forget what we’re experiencing now, in the heat of the moment, the heat of the future.

mwoods@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4212

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Heat of moment a reminder resilience is about more than storms