Why we love trees!

Here's a fantastic image from Felix and Tal, the NUS/ETH Zurich team studying the microclimate effect of trees over on the old astro at Dover. The guys flew a drone with a thermal imaging camera over the grid layout of trees (visible as circles in the image). The image hardly needs interpretation - in mid-day tropical Singapore, trees can mean the difference between comfort and sunstroke. If the future cities of a warming world want to be sustainable and liveable then clearly planting certain tree species will determine whether we create urban hells or civic oases.

Climate Amelioration effect of trees - Dover Campus: Image courtesy of Tal Hertig/Felix Sadlo, ETH Zurich

Notes on image from Tal and Felix

The Image shows only surface temperatures. Thus the cooling that is seen within the plot is mainly caused through the trees shading, although evaporative cooling cannot be excluded as a causal effect, as the plants are cooler than their surrounding partially due to transpiration. Nevertheless the image shows that plants are very effective in cooling their immediate environment.

It should be further noted, that the numbers are not exact due to the faults of thermal imaging. However the temperatures are within the same ballpark as the actual temperatures and the relative temperatures are very accurate (differences between surfaces).