Marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent, severe and lasting for longer periods of time. While the impacts of marine heatwaves on coral reefs and kelp forests are now well established. The impacts of heatwave events on intertidal ecosystems are poorly understood. Intertidal communities are in many ways preadapted to thermal stress and desiccation but heatwave events can exceed these tolerances causing losses to some parts of assemblages. Intertidal areas are also prone to ‘terrestrial heatwave events’, however due to the nature of these natural environmental extremes, it can be challenging to predict when these natural climate events will occur making it difficult to disentangle the driving forces. We therefore developed an experimental approach to examine local solar warming and shading effects. Experiments were conducted at two rocky shores in northern NSW, Australia (Brooms Head and Hastings Point). Four treatments were observed; 1. Greenhouse (designed to enhance solar heating), 2. Shade Mesh (designed to reduce solar heating by providing shade), 3. Experimental control (structure only) and 4. Un manipulated natural control. The experiment was repeated 3 times with 6 replicates per treatment and experimental structures deployed for at least a month with species composition and abundance recorded every 2 weeks. Changes in the species composition of assemblages suggest that 1. Local heating can cause mortality and 2. Shade can mitigate these effects, we therefore consider the potential for natural shaded shores to provide refugia and artificial shaded structures to provide mitigation of heatwave effects.