Forest structure and composition alleviate human thermal stress

摘要: Current climate change aggravates human health hazards posed by heat stress. Forests can locally mitigate this by acting as strong thermal buffers, yet potential mediation by forest ecological characteristics remains underexplored. We report over 14 months of hourly microclimate data from 131 forest plots across four European countries and compare these to open‐field controls using physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) to reflect human thermal perception. Forests slightly tempered cold extremes, but the strongest buffering …