NSCC Publications - How temperature and relative humidity affect collection deterioration rates Providing collection care, preservation and conservation treatment services to collectors and collecting institutions. If you are comfortable, your collection may not be. Worse, it could be deteriorating. Temperature and relative humidity levels or fluctuations can be the biggest cause of environmental damage to a collection.
Temperature is the outward manifestation of the amount of energy contained within an object.
At higher temperature atoms and molecules move faster. Because they are moving faster, chemical reactions occur more quickly. Thus, higher temperature increases the rate of decay, a chemical reaction. For most materials, the rate of decay is unacceptably fast at temperatures humans find comfortable. This is almost independent of temperature.