Welcome to the microclimate research group

This website provides tools and data for microclimate modelling showcasing research from Dr Ilya Maclean's group, based at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus, and our collaborators worldwide.

There is a great need to determine the level of threat posed by climate change to natural and managed species, and the most effective means to adapt conservation and agriculture to this threat. Most organisms experience climate scales of millimetres to tens of metres, yet climate biologists usually rely climate data derived from widely spaced weather stations. The climate data used in many studies thus bear little resemblance to the conditions that organisms actually experience.

Our aim is to bridge this spatial mismatch. The microclimate research group are pioneering the development of microclimate models and their application in conservation and agricultural research. Here you can find software and tools for modelling microclimate and fine-scale hydrology. Our work has shown that microclimate fundamentally alters our understanding of biological responses to climate change.