Climate change can look very different at the scale of a forest, field or hillside. A new review shows how changes in vegetation and atmospheric conditions can cause local microclimates to warm at very different rates from the regional climate - and why this matters for understanding how biodiversity will respond to climate change.
Climate change is usually described using regional or global averages. But most organisms experience the climate much closer to the ground or within microhabitats, where temperature and other conditions can differ substantially from those measured by weather stations or represented in large-scale climate models.
This local climate, known as the microclimate , does not necessarily change in the same way as the surrounding regional climate. In a new review published in Global Change Biology , researchers from around the world synthesise how climate change can alter microclimates and identify the processes responsible for these differences.
“Climate change is often described as a single number for a region. But organisms live in specific places – in a particular patch of forest or on a particular slope. The climate they experience can change at a very different rate from the regional average,” says Caroline Greiser, researcher at Stockholm University and lead author of the study.
Vegetation can change the local climate
One important driver is vegetation. Climate change can alter forests, shrublands and other vegetation, which in turn changes how much sunlight reaches the ground and how easily the ground loses heat to the atmosphere.
“Vegetation is not simply responding to climate change – it can also modify the climate experienced by organisms living under canopies,” says Greiser. “When vegetation changes, it changes the local energy balance, and this can lead to very different temperature trends within the same landscape.”
In one of the model simulations presented in the review, the expansion of shrubs and trees into open steppes in Turkey substantially altered near-ground air temperatures. On the hottest days, shrub encroachment resulted in temperatures up to 16 degrees lower than those in open areas. In a regional warming scenario, the open areas would warm up much faster.
Clouds and other atmospheric changes matter too
Microclimate is also influenced directly by changes in atmospheric conditions. For example, cloud cover controls how much solar radiation reaches the Earth's surface. A reduction in cloudiness can substantially increase solar heating in sun-exposed locations, while shaded areas, such as forest interiors or pole-facing slopes, may be less affected.
The review shows how such changes can interact with topography, vegetation, soil moisture and other factors to produce increasingly different microclimatic conditions over relatively short distances.
Until recently, it has been difficult to study these changes over long periods and across large areas. New sensor networks, long-term datasets and mechanistic models are now making it possible to investigate how changes in the atmosphere and vegetation translate into the microclimates experienced by organisms.
“The processes that determine microclimate are complex and involve both atmospheric and biological systems. Understanding them therefore requires collaboration between atmospheric scientists and ecologists,” says Greiser.
Why microclimate matters for biodiversity
Understanding how microclimates change could improve predictions of how species and ecosystems respond to climate change. Regional climate data may suggest that an area is warming, while local conditions can remain relatively buffered - or change even more rapidly – because of vegetation, topography and atmospheric processes.
Accounting for this variation could improve predictions of future species distributions and ecological interactions, and help inform conservation and land management strategies that are adapted to local climate change.
“If we want to understand where species will persist and where they will be most vulnerable, we need to know not only how the regional climate is changing, but also how that change translates into the microclimates organisms actually experience,” says Greiser.
Global Change Biology
Literature review
Not applicable
Climate change experienced by life on Earth – drivers and mechanisms of future trends in microclimates
21-Oct-2026