Using crickets to estimate air temperature
Many people will look at their thermometer, weather station or weather app to find out the temperature.
But when I was browsing social media recently, I came across an interesting post from Environment and Climate Change Canada that said chirping crickets can tell you the temperature.
This immediately piqued my interest and I started looking into it further.
During my research, I found that physicist and inventor Amos Dolbear discovered an individual cricket chirps “with no great regularity” and the rate of chirp seemed to be determined by the air temperature.
Dolbear formulated and published his mathematical equation in 1897 and is what is now known as Dolbear’s Law. It states the relationship between the air temperature and the rate at which a cricket chirps. The simplified formula is to count the number of chirp-chirps during an eight-second interval and add
five to give you a rough estimate of the temperature in Celsius.
For example, if you heard 23 chirps in eight seconds,
add five, and the temperature would be 28 C. For those who may prefer the imperial system, you can count the number of chirps during a 14-second interval and add
40.
There are some exceptions to this method. The species of cricket can sometimes alter the calculation slightly, where you might need to add four or six instead of five.
Crickets also generally don’t chirp at temperatures below 10 C or above 38 C.
But the next time you’re outside, maybe camping or enjoying some time outdoors, and you’re curious about the temperature, listen for the crickets.