5. what is the difference between microclimate and microclimate

The weather variables in a microclimate, such as temperature, rainfall, wind or humidity, may be subtly different from the conditions prevailing over the area as a whole and from those that might be reasonably expected under certain types of pressure or cloud cover.

Indeed, it is the amalgam of many, slightly different local microclimates that actually makes up the microclimate for a town, city or wood. It is these subtle differences and exceptions to the rule that make microclimates so fascinating to study, and these notes help to identify and explain the key differences which can be noticed by ground-level observations. Upland areas have a specific type of climate that is notably different from the surrounding lower levels. This means that even quite modest upland regions, such as The Cotswolds, can be significantly colder on average than somewhere like the nearby Severn Valley in Gloucestershire.

Occasionally, a temperature inversion can make it warmer above, but such conditions rarely last for long. With higher hills and mountains, the average temperatures can be so much lower that winters are longer and summers much shorter.

Higher ground also tends to be windier, which makes for harsher winter weather. The effect of this is that plants and animals are often different from those at low levels. Hills often cause cloud to form over them by forcing air to rise, either when winds have to go over them or they become heated by the sun. When winds blow against a hill-side and the air is moist, the base of the cloud that forms may be low enough to cover the summit.

Consequently, the leeward side of hills and mountain ranges is much drier than the windward side. This rising air can also create an anabatic wind on the sunny side of the hill.

Sunshine-facing slopes south-facing in the Northern Hemisphere, north-facing in the Southern Hemisphere are warmer than the opposite slopes. Apart from temperature inversions, another occasion when hills can be warmer than valleys is during clear nights with little wind, particularly in winter. As air cools, it begins to flow downhill and gathers on the valley floor or in pockets where there are dips in the ground.

The flow of cold air can also create what is known as a katabatic wind. The coastal climate is influenced by both the land and sea between which the coast forms a boundary. The thermal properties of water are such that the sea maintains a relatively constant day to day temperature compared with the land.

The sea also takes a long time to heat up during the summer months and, conversely, a long time to cool down during the winter. In the tropics, sea temperatures change little and the coastal climate depends on the effects caused by the daytime heating and night-time cooling of the land. This involves the development of a breeze from off the sea sea breeze from late morning and from off the land land breeze during the night.

The tropical climate is dominated by convective showers and thunderstorms that continue to form over the sea but only develop over land during the day.

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SAS Institute Inc. Download references. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. All authors reviewed and approved the manuscript for submission.

Correspondence to Najmul Haider. Publisher's note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Reprints and Permissions. Haider, N. Microclimatic temperatures increase the potential for vector-borne disease transmission in the Scandinavian climate. Sci Rep 7, Download citation. Received : 15 February Accepted : 13 July Published : 15 August Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:.

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Scientific Reports By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate. Advanced search. Skip to main content Thank you for visiting nature. Download PDF. Subjects Entomology Infectious diseases Public health. Abstract We quantified the difference between the meteorological temperature recorded by the Danish Meteorological Institute DMI weather stations and the actual microclimatic temperatures at two or three different heights at six potential insect habitats.

Introduction Temperature is a key driver of vector-borne disease transmission, as replication of arboviruses and parasites within the cold-blooded vectors are dependent on the environmental temperature 1 , 2. Results Microclimatic vs. Full size table. Figure 1. Full size image. Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4. Discussion Despite the cool Scandinavian climate in Denmark, there have been outbreaks of vector-borne diseases in recent times Conclusion Our model shows that viruses develop at a faster rate and have a longer season of transmission when modelled with microclimatic temperature compared to meteorological temperature.

Linear regression to predict microclimatic temperature We extracted hourly temperature, solar radiation, wind speed, precipitation and humidity information from the DMI weather data. The following steps were then taken: 1. References 1. PubMed Google Scholar 4.

Article Google Scholar Google Scholar PubMed Google Scholar View author publications. Ethics declarations Competing Interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Additional information Publisher's note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Electronic supplementary material. Supplementary Information. About this article. Cite this article Haider, N. Copy to clipboard.

Comments By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. Publish with us For authors Submit manuscript. Secondly, you can view a comfort frequency map. Users can determine the relevant timeframe as well as the temperatures they consider to be comfortable.

The resulting heat map shows the percentage of those hours for which the perceived temperature of each point on the map falls within the comfortable range. Spacemaker does all of this in a matter of seconds, presenting a map that visualizes the perceived temperature across your site. Thermal comfort is in the spotlight The launch of our microclimate analysis comes just at the right time.

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This analysis represents a larger journey regarding comprehensive outdoor thermal comfort, and sustainability more generally where we believe that livability is a crucial part of sustainable urban development.

Visit our Help center for more technical information about the microclimate analysis. Main image credit: Meiying Ng for Unsplash. Discover how Spacemaker can empower you to make confident, data-driven, decisions. Architects, planners and developers now have a new tool in their toolbox to help them design with sustainability in mind from day one. How the intuitiveness of Spacemaker supports the decision-making process during early-stage developments.

Industry Real Estate Developers. Use cases Site Acquisition. Mean temperatures are consistently cooler under-canopy microclimate compared to open field macroclimate. Y-axis scales are not fixed. Average weekly near-ground air temperature recorded in the open field blue and below the forest canopy red on North-West left and South right aspects.

An uncoupled spatio-temporal pattern of temperatures between sampled sites was common in our dataset, mostly during spring. At this time, the snowpack under the canopy on the northwest-facing slope persists compared to the adjacent open-field where it has already melted due to the increase in seasonal temperatures see Fig. The buffering effect of the forest canopy against the average temperature is recorded in almost all the periods of the year, especially in the central hours of the day when open-field temperatures peaked Supplementary Fig.

During the growing season, the relationship between temperature offset and open-field temperature is linear for the southern stand Fig. Relationships between the average near-ground temperatures in open-field set as reference and below-canopy temperature offset during the growing season from May to September using General Additive Mixed Models GAMMs for south left panel and northwest right panel treelines, respectively.

The linear mixed model between below-canopy temperatures and the open-field temperatures during the growing season summarizes the microclimatic buffering effect of the forest canopies at the treeline.

Figure 6 shows that the near-ground temperature under the canopy increases when the open field warms up, but at a lower rate at the southern treeline slope coefficient of 0. For instance, at the southern treeline the below-canopy near-ground temperature may be either higher or lower than at the northern treeline, depending on the reference temperature.

At left side of the crossing point in Fig. When the when open-field temperature is warmer than the below canopy air temperature the buffering capacity of the southern treeline is The pattern of decoupling shows that both the understory average temperature at the northwest and south aspects is coupled with the open-field temperature from p.

From a. In the afternoon till sunset from p. Relationship between near-ground open-field set as reference and below-canopy daily mean temperature of the growing season from May to September. Blue and red circles represent the mean daily temperature of northwestern and southern treelines, respectively.

Positive values shaded pink area indicate overall near-ground warmer conditions under the canopy than at the reference site, while negative values shaded blue area indicate cooler air under the canopy than reference conditions. Radar inset plot shows the hourly slope of the fitted lines. Full statistics are reported in Supplementary Material Table S4.

The average temperature of the soil showed less weekly variability than the average air temperature Fig. S6 for average daily soil temperature. However, the temperature offset between the understory and open-field conditions was much higher than the near-ground air temperature.

By contrast, in winter, the offset between temperatures is positive, meaning warmer temperatures below the canopy. Average weekly soil temperature recorded in the open field blue and below the forest canopy red at the North-West left and South right aspect.

A difference between the temperatures recorded at comparable elevations under open-field conditions on the northwest- and south-facing slopes where we deployed further instrumental measurement at m. At this time, the presence of the snow cover not yet melted in this month, Supplementary Fig. The NW treeline shows almost throughout the year a contrasting soil moisture pattern, which is higher on the open field, in the prairie, compared to the understory Fig. S8 for average daily soil moisture.

Conversely, in the months of December, January, and February the moisture content was higher in the open field compared to the covered soil. Comparison of average soil near-ground temperature in the open field during March on north-west blue and south-facing slopes red. Average weekly soil near-ground moisture recorded in the open field blue and below the forest canopy red at the North-West left and South right aspects.

Our results provide substantial evidence that local modification of the climate by topography and canopy cover creates microclimates at the near-ground forest surface which can partly outweigh regional macroclimate variability. Major microclimatic differences between south- and north-west-facing treelines are attributed primarily to the difference in the insolation-radiation balance on the two slopes i.

S9 , which produces marked effects on the temperature and moisture of the soil and air on the two slopes Beyond differences imposed by the slope exposure itself, canopy cover also marks the seasonal pattern of treeline microclimate by playing a key role in regulating the documented offset of average and maximum summer temperatures. That is, the Mediterranean beech treeline provides a highly heterogeneous thermal environment, where the under-canopy is not only cooler on average than surrounding open fields, but negative maximum temperature offset cooler in the forest and positive minimum temperature offset warmer in the forest also entail lower temperature variability below the canopy on both aspects, as also observed by Renaud et al.

At the study sites the average air temperature offset that we documented is consistent with the general patterns observed in temperate regions across the globe ranging from 1. These above-mentioned differences in temperature are biologically significant, as experimental studies have shown that high air temperature and hence air VPD , regardless of its primary mechanism, directly affects whole-plant growth and reproduction as well as promotes soil microbial activity and nitrogen mineralization 42 , For instance, Keitel et al.

Analyzing the dynamics of radial stem variance and radial growth, van der Maaten et al. Compared to open-field, understory vegetation also benefits from the smoothed temperature from overstory, which affects the growing conditions and the carbon C uptake linked to an efficient trade-off between photosynthesis and transpiration. Besides, vegetation-mediated changes in microclimate have been observed e. Taken together, the above-cited studies yield insights into the role of microclimate temperature on growth and carbon cycles of temperate beech forests but see Wu et al.

This offset became more negative that is, lower under-canopy temperatures at the treeline as the open-field temperature increased, and more positive that is, higher under-canopy temperatures at the treeline as the open-site temperature decreased. In this context, large differences emerged in the relationship between temperature offset and macroclimate between NW and S-facing slopes i.

Roughly speaking, the forest canopy treeline on the south-facing slope has a substantial cooling effect in summer and heating in winter, compared to the northwest slope.

The results supported by this study closely agree with empirical research showing the existence of a more pronounced thermal gradient on south or southwest-facing edges 48 , 49 , albeit with some exceptions e. This very high value far exceeds the values for other forest types across biomes reported by De Frenne et al.

Indeed, the higher plant area index PAI coupled with the aerodynamic crowns closer arranged to the ground at the north-western than southern treeline, is likely to have played a crucial role in reducing incoming solar radiation to the ground and hence smoothing temperatures, as documented for instance by Frey et al. This would not minimize the role of landscape topography or other background environmental constraints for the forest microclimate at high elevation, but we acknowledge that the microscale variation in canopy cover, coupled with the unbalanced microclimate measurements—which ignores possible within-site spatial variation in near-surface air temperatures—might be underestimated in our results 53 , The rather peculiar pattern of decoupling of below-canopy temperature vs.

This result might sound rather counterintuitive since the lower stature and height above ground of the northern exposed trees should benefit from a strong aerodynamic decoupling to the free atmosphere, as outlined above. However, we point out that this is consistent either with the difference in the solar radiation balance on opposite aspects or with the difference in altitude between treelines, where the natural disturbances coupled with human influences are the most obvious reasons for the southern treeline position below the target elevation Although such a decoupling effect cannot completely isolate forest climatic conditions from macroclimate fluctuations, it has the potential to partly offset the regional macroclimatic warming experienced in the forest understory due to anthropogenic climate change 7.

As such, closed forest canopies might provide a line of defense against the impacts of current and future warming on the ecological processes that influence high elevation Mediterranean forest ecosystems 7 , 29 for example, regeneration, demography and community reshuffling, litter decomposition, and soil water and nutrient cycling, among the others.

To this, De Frenne et al. However, in the Mediterranean bio-climate, the mechanism by which southern exposures might support microrefugia is still not well addressed since temperature effects due to aspect must also be balanced against water loss at such sites.

As offsetting was strongest for maximum temperatures, we might expect also extreme events in the Mediterranean basin such as heat waves to be more strongly attenuated than gradual temperature changes.

Canopy-air temperature interaction phenomena also become particularly important during late spring frosts, which may severely affect the photochemical efficiency of young leaves, thereby influencing development of seedlings and shoots for F.

Our results showed that soil temperature is also controlled by canopy cover as previously detailed for the treeline ecotone in Nepal The denser the canopy cover i.

Albeit with less daytime variability, our results show that the average soil temperature is strongly coupled with the air temperature see Supplementary Tables S5 and S6 , with a strong cooling effect provided by the canopy in summer.

Here snowpack becomes isothermal earlier in the spring when radiation differences between slope facets are highly dependent on solar angles, thus increasing the role of aspect differences between sites. At our treelines, the soil moisture showed high spatio-temporal variability, affected either directly or indirectly by both precipitation and temperature feedbacks.

Such drying—rewetting cycles of soils would affect not only the microbial biomass and the mineralization of soil organic carbon i. At southern exposed treelines the soil moisture pattern between open-field and below-canopy conditions was in phase during most of the growing season suggested that the soil moisture is modulated by the atmosphere VPD rather than by the different physiognomy of the cover.

We argue that the peculiar pattern of soil moisture at the north-western treeline i. First, the north-western treeline stand with a dense canopy would intercept and transpire more water because of the coupling with the macroclimate and therefore deplete soil moisture faster than areas with a sparse canopy or none at all Throughfall can be also intercepted and retained by the well-packed undecomposed litter layer decreasing the percolation into the upper soil layer.

Additionally, this could be attributed to the different organic characteristics of soils: in the open field, the prairie soil appears more soaked compared to the forest soil where the humus layers, characteristic of understory beech forest, absorb from two to four times their weight of water This study compared the below-canopy microclimate to the local climate in order to explore the variability in the near-ground microclimate imposed by contrasting topographic conditions, phenology, and canopy cover in the highest deciduous Fagus sylvatica Mediterranean treeline.

Our findings provide strong support for the notion that local landscape structure, as delineated by topographic exposure, and canopy cover create microclimates at the forest near-ground, which partly outweigh macroclimate variability. In particular, we found that i during the growing season, below-canopy near-ground temperatures were, on average, cooler than those in the open field on both aspects S and NW investigated, and ii compared to the south-facing slope, the northern site exhibited less decoupling from free-air environment conditions and low variability in microclimate trends that closely track the free-air biophysical environment.

The unbalanced microclimate measurements available for this study, coupled with the high heterogeneous environment, seem to preclude a comprehensive assessment of the potential effects of ongoing climate change on the local microclimate condition at the monitoring site.

However, the results outlined above provide evidence that topographically heterogeneous subalpine areas are more decoupled, and thus more climatically stable, than open fields. Our results suggest that current microclimates have the potential to offset climate warming at the local scale and reduce the disequilibrium between ecosystem responses and anthropogenic climate change by i facilitating forest natural regeneration at the subalpine belt, ii promoting the stability of the carbon pool via reduction of the respiration costs, and iii allowing understory species to persist in situ, thereby preventing thermophilization of plant communities.

We argue that while such a decoupling effect cannot wholly isolate understory climatic conditions from regional macroclimate, it has the potential to partly offset the climatic warming experienced in the Mediterranean forest understory due to anthropogenic climate change. Jones, C. Organisms as ecosystem engineers. In Ecosystem Management — Springer, Alvarez-Uria, P. Low temperature limits of root growth in deciduous and evergreen temperate tree species.

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