Large-area single-crystal graphene films remain a challenge which settlement will permit to take full profit of the intrinsic properties of the material in electronic application. Toward this direction, in the present work we study the effect of temperature on the chemical vapor deposition growth of graphene over copper foil, in low pressure. Graphene growth commence with the crystallization of a supersaturated fraction of carbon-adatom species, while the nucleation density is the result of competition between the mobility of the carbon-adatom species and their desorption rate. We study the nuclei size and density distribution, growth rate and coverage rate to calculate the nucleation activation energy. In addition, we provide information considering the control of the intrinsic strain present in the graphene domains as a result of the ripple formation. We study the agreement, considering the ripple formation, between the theoretical model of thermal grooving and observation made by atomic force microscopy.