This bubble chart shows 46 world cities plotted by average temperature, sunshine, and precipitation in August. We see the continuing trend for cities in Asia to have more rain and less sunshine than cities where similar grasses are grown in the Americas or Europe. Bangalore, Bangkok, Mumbai, and Kolkata all have relatively low sunlight during this month. And transition zone cities like Shanghai, Osaka, and Tokyo are mixed right in with the tropical locations of Singapore, Colombo, and Sanya, but the transition zone cities are managing creeping bentgrass, for the most part, on putting greens.

Hong Kong averages 189 hours of sunshine in August. Compared with other cities plotted on this chart, that is rather average, in fact even a low amount of sun. But for Hong Kong, this is one of the sunniest months of the year. Only July, with 214 sunshine hours on average, and October, with 192 hours, will have more. With these charts we see that the consistently low sunlight hours in many parts of Asia means that although there is similarity in temperature throughout the year with other warm-season areas, the actual growing environment is completely different — there is no overlap in the combination of temperature and sunshine in any month of the year.

See below, in the motion chart showing these data over the course of twelve months. We plot the track of Hong Kong and Miami through one year and they describe/explore completely different zones of temperature-sunshine combinations. We can use some of the same grasses in these areas, but the management practices need to be adjusted to fit the local environment.