It works really well in colder climates as well. In fact I guess the overwhelming majority of homes outside the city centers in Norway are wooden houses.
According to our local carpenter the wooden houses in Scandinavia are rapidly deteriorating because of the increase in temperature. His take is that wooden houses need a long cold spell in winter in order to slow down the attack by tree-eating organisms during summer. Could be depending on the widespread usage of fir trees for house-building, other types of trees may be more resilient to warm climates.
My experience of older mainland European houses is southern France. All the floor beams are made of ancient gnarly woodworm eaten hard wood, but it only really affects the outer cm of wood.
So I wonder if the problem is partially newer building techniques, thinner cut wood, less dense wood?
If Scandinavia is anything like Canada, the Pine Beetle.
We need a week or two at -40C (fun fact, -40C is roughly equal to -40F) to really thin them out. We haven't been getting that cold weather, so large numbers of them make it through the winter, and then ravage the trees.
It's related to the dramatic increase of forest fires in Western Canada, because dead trees dry out, provide little coverage to the area they're in (which lets the area dry further), and then burn very easily. All it takes is a lightening strike or some idiot deciding to violate a burn-ban, and then everything goes up.
I've heard the warm weather has led to a "tick-pocalypse" and resurgence of ticks and mosquitoes, particularly on Ontario and Quebec. I don't know about termites, but wouldn't be surprised if the warm weather is doing a poor job suppressing them.
