Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel Bomb here. If weather is your mood, then climate is your personality. That's an analogy some scientists used to help explain the difference between these two words that people sometimes get mixed up. In other words, whether exists in the short term, it's the state of the atmosphere in a specific area during a limited period of time I think minutes, hours, days, or weeks. Climate, meanwhile,
describes long term average trends in weather. And if you're interested in the ladder, you'd better know geography. Our global climate is made up of many smaller regional climates. Break those down and you'll find local variations at just about every conceivable scale. And that brings us to micro climates, an amazing subject with broad applications for farming, conservation, wildlife management, and city planning. The climates are a bit like woven tapestries.
The big picture is important, no question, but so are all the seemingly minor details found inside the larger whole. We spoke via email with tomaso Uker, an environmental scientist at the University of Bristol. He said he would define the term microclimate as quote the suite of climactic conditions temperature, rainfall, humidity, solar radiation measured in localized areas, typically near the ground, and at spatial scales that are directly relevant to ecological processes.
We'll talk about that last bit in a minute, but first there's another criteria to discuss. According to some researchers, a microclimate by definition must differ from the larger area that surrounds it. Forests provide us with some great examples. We also spoke via email with University of Montana ecologist Solomon Debrowski. He said the climate near the ground in a tropical rainforest is dramatically different from the climate in the canopy fifty meters or about a hundred and sixty
feet above. This vertical gradient, among other factors, allows for the staggering biodiversity we see in the tropics. Likewise, scientists observed that partial solar eclipse caused the air temperature of an Eastern European meadow to change more dramatically than it did in a nearby forest. That's because trees provide not only shade, but their leaves also reflect solar radiation. At the same time, forests tend to reduce wind speeds, and
all of those factors add up. Twenty nineteen review of ninety eight wooded places spread out across five continents found that forests are about four degrees Celsie's cooler on average than the areas outside of them. That's around seven degrees cooler in fahrenheit. Now, if you hate the cold, don't worry. There's a cozy exception to the rule. According to that same study, forests are usually one degree celsius or a at one point eight degrees fahrenheit warmer than the external
environment during wintertime, which is pretty cool. So when does a microclimate stop being well micro? In other words, is there a maximum size we should be aware of when discussing them. It depends on who you ask, the uker said. In terms of horizontal scale, some have defined microclimate as anything that's less than a hundred meters or about three hundred feet in range. I'm personally less prescriptive about this. Instead, he says, the scales we consider microclimates at should be
determined by the questions we're trying to answer. Quote, if I want to know how temperature affects the photosynthesis of a leaf, I should be measuring temperature at centimeter scale. If I want to know if and how temperature affects the habitat preference of a large mobile mammal, it's probably more relevant to capture temperature variation across tens to hundreds of meters. But yes, solitary plants have the power to
generate itty bitty microclimates. Just ask Peter Blanken, a geography professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the co author of a book called Microclimate and Local Climate. He said via email, a single stock of corn can create its own microclimate through the shading and changes in soil properties in the immediate vicinity of the stock. For a field of corn, the microclimate created would be much larger,
extending over the entire field. Many organisms eke out a living in some of the dinkiest microclimates you can imagine. Take aphids, spider mites, and leaf minor insects. All those critters are dwarfed by the plant leaves they feed on, and every leaf comes with its own microclimate. Observations show that aphids seek out cooler leaves, while those other invertebrates prefer warmer ones. Because none of these animals can generate their own body heat, leaf microclimates have a critical effect
on their well being. It no secret that our planet is going through some rough times. At the macro level, the global temperature is climbing. Nine out of the ten hottest years on record have occurred since two thousand five, and by one reason estimate, roughly one million species around
the world are facing extinction due to human activities. The uker said on one of the big questions that ecologists and environmental scientists are trying to answer right now is how will individual species and whole ecosystems respond to rapid climate change and habitat loss. To me, microclimates are key component of this research. If we don't measure and understand climate at the appropriate scale, then predicting how things will
change in the future becomes a lot harder. Developers have long understood the impact that small scale climates have on our daily lives. Urban heat island is a term for cities that have higher temperatures than neighboring rural areas. Plants release vapors that can moderate local climates, but in city these natural greenery is often scarce, and to make matters worse, plenty of our roads and buildings are made of materials that absorb or re emit heat from the sun, and
vehicle emissions don't exactly help the situation. Still, it's not like Boston or Beijing are thermal monoliths. Sometimes the documented temperatures within a single city vary by fifteen to twenty degrees fahrenheit that's eight to eleven degrees celsius. That's where metro parks and city trees come in. They have good cooling effects on nearby neighborhoods, Blanket said. Several cities around the world have developed programs to increase urban green spaces.
Tree planting programs and green roof programs have been shown to lower surface temperatures, decrease air pollution, and decrease surface water runoff or urban flash flooding in urban areas. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and produced by Tyler Klang. Or more in this and lots of other cool topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is a
production of my heart Radio. Or more podcasts in my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.