GRASS IS COOL

Ever stood in a parking lot on a hot day and felt the searing heat from the ground, and when you’re standing on a lawn it’s cooler?  Ever felt how cooling it is to walk barefoot through the grass?  The cooling sensation is very real.

A simple experiment measuring the temperature of exposed soil, cut grass and uncut grass in summer – reported by the Technical Centre for Climate Change and Agricultural Development in Zambia – yielded a profound message: Grass is cool.

On a hot day, the cooling effect of grass makes an especially big difference compared to other surfaces. Temperatures on lawn surfaces can be 10-14 degrees cooler than on concrete or asphalt.

In the above experiment:

>  Uncut grass keeps the soil at 19.5°C.

>  A grass cut at a level of 10 cm maintains the soil temperature at 24.5°C

>  Bare soil in the middle of summer rises to more than 40°C.

Grassy areas cool the air as water evaporates from the blades of grass. As much as 50% of the sun’s heat falling on grassland will be absorbed and eliminated through transpiration. Grass absorbs the sun’s heat during the day and then slowly releases it through the night.

Keep your lawn. It is cool to be green.