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Impact of climate change on the existing residential building stock in Turkey: An analysis on energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and occupant comfort
... Global warming poses a significant threat to the future performance of existing residential buildings, particularly in terms of energy demand and overheating [11][12][13]. In response, there has been a growing body of research dedicated to the topic, which has involved either full-scale testing or, most commonly, thermal and energy simulation studies [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. The predominant approach typically involves either the exploration of extreme historical data or the forecast of future scenarios. ...
... The predominant approach typically involves either the exploration of extreme historical data or the forecast of future scenarios. The existing literature indicates that climate change-induced overheating could be a significant problem in many regions across the world [14][15][16]. However, the impact has large dependency on geographical location (climate) and building type [12]. ...
... Room 2, with efficient cross-ventilation, emerged as the most effective first-floor space during the evening, highlighting the essential role of nighttime ventilation in mitigating overheating under severe heat conditions. Past research using building simulation tools has shown that dwellings lacking adequate ventilation are particularly vulnerable to overheating problems, a situation likely to worsen with the advent of warmer climates [15,21]. In this context, Room 4 failed the overheating assessment, while Room 2 met all criteria during the especially hot summer of 2019 when designated as a bedroom (nighttime space). ...
Global warming is expected to lead to longer and more intense heatwaves, which will have negative environmental and socioeconomic impacts around the world. South Africa is projected to experience significant warming, with surface temperatures possibly increasing by up to 3 °C by mid-century. This warming trend has implications for architecture, as the demand for cooling in buildings could rise dramatically. However, socioeconomic conditions in developing countries may limit the use of air conditioning to mitigate indoor overheating. In South Africa, research has shown that government provided low-cost housing structures are thermally inefficient, with temperatures occasionally exceeding outdoor levels. Residents often rely on natural ventilation and personal actions to cope with heat. However, the effects of climate change may render these strategies insufficient if energy poverty and housing improvement are not addressed. This study aims to examine the impact of global warming on a high mass, naturally ventilated, affordable housing structure in Johannesburg, South Africa. Measured operative temperature data from a long-term experimental study, alongside adaptive temperature limits to evaluate overheating, highlight the vulnerability of indoor spaces without adequate insulation and/or thermal mass. The results underscore concerns about the performance of low-cost and affordable housing in warmer future climates in the South African interior.
... Climate change will lead to changes in the annual energy demand of buildings in the future since climate-related parameters affect the thermal performance of buildings (Andrić et al., 2017;Dodoo and Gustavsson, 2016). Recently, various scientific studies have been carried out to investigate the impact of climate change on heating and cooling energy demand in buildings in different geographical areas, including Europe (Invidiata et al., 2018;Dodoo and Gustavsson, 2016;Dino and Meral Akgül, 2019;Tettey and Gustavsson, 2020;Ciancio et al., 2020;Frank, 2005), South America (Invidiata and Ghisi, 2016), North America (Wang and Chen, 2014;Berardi and Jafarpur, 2020;Zhai and Helman, 2019;Shen, 2017;Huang and Gurney, 2016), and Asia (Chen et al., 2021;Wan et al., 2011Wan et al., , 2012Zou et al., 2021;Radhi, 2009). The present research mainly focuses on two aspects: 1) creating future weather files for diverse future climate scenarios and locations, and 2) changes in operational energy demand due to climate impact. ...
... Space heating was provided by natural gas-fired boiler plants in the severe cold and cold regions (Harbin and Beijing), with an overall efficiency of 85% based on the study conducted by Wan et al. (2012). The emissions factor for natural gas was derived (0.25 kg CO 2 -eq/kWh) from Ecoinvent, which is similar to previous studies (0.18-0.19 kg CO 2 -eq/kWh) (Dino and Meral Akgül, 2019;Jenkins et al., 2009). In other climate zones, heating was powered by electricity. ...
... This is predominant due to the higher carbon intensity for electricity for space cooling than the heating boiler for space heating. The decarbonization of electricity is an important step in mitigating GHG emissions from buildings under climate impact (Dino and Meral Akgül, 2019). In the historical climate, GHG emissions from cooling were lower than those from heating, but in the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s, they will exceed the GHG emissions from heating. ...
With the urgency of addressing climate change, cross-laminated timber (CLT) has become a sustainable material to substitute reinforced concrete (RC) in building applications. There is a growing number of studies on the life cycle assessment of CLT buildings worldwide, mainly based on historical weather files. This study integrates climate change on life cycle greenhouse gas emissions (LCGHGE) in CLT and RC buildings in five climate zones, including the product and construction (P&C), operational and End-of-Life (EoL) stages. The CCWorldWeatherGen tool is used to generate future weather data (i.e., the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s) for the A2 emissions scenario. The simulation results show heating demands will decline significantly and cooling demands will rise in all cases. By the 2080s, global warming will result in an average LCGHGE of 33.09% and 38.90% higher than the baseline scenario for RC and CLT buildings, respectively. Strategies to reduce space cooling demand and decarbonize electricity will become increasingly important in the future. The average LCGHGE of CLT buildings is 27.53%, 26.22%, 24.67% and 22.19% lower than those of RC alternatives in the baseline, the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s, respectively. The study demonstrates that the lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the greater benefits from EoL from CLT buildings outweigh the operational GHG savings benefits from the thermal mass of RC buildings, even when climate impact is taken into account. Therefore, CLT buildings are a feasible way to reduce GHG emissions from buildings in China.
... Izmir in the first climate region, Istanbul in the second climate region and Ankara in the third climate region [29]. Characteristics of these climate regions are hot and dry summers, but mild winter for the first climate region, warm and humid summers, but cold winter for the second climate region, and dry and warm summers, but long and cold winters for the third climate region [30]. Weather data of the cities are taken from [27]. ...
... These three cities are selected for this investigation as about 30% of Turkey's total population lives in these cities [31]. The construction materials that comply with TS 825 are clearly explained in Dino et al. [30]. Construction materials for Istanbul are used for all cities to be able to observe the sole effect of thermo-chromic thin film coatings on energy consumption in these cities. ...
... Construction materials for Istanbul are used for all cities to be able to observe the sole effect of thermo-chromic thin film coatings on energy consumption in these cities. Therefore, same construction materials listed for Istanbul in Dino et al. [30] is considered, where maximum limit of heat transfer coefficient, , as 0.60 W/m 2 K, 0.40 W/m 2 K and 0.60 W/m 2 K is specified for wall, roof and floor, respectively. ...
Thermo-chromic coatings are promising passive systems for providing energy saving performance. They change their optical properties within visible and solar wavelengths according to their temperature, as these coatings contain materials such as vanadium dioxide that change phase at their transition temperature. In this study, energy savings performance of thin pigmented thermo-chromic coating attached on an ordinary window glass is investigated by modeling a simple office room for three different transition temperatures in three cities that are all in different climate regions of Turkey; Izmir, Istanbul and Ankara. Optical properties of thin thermo-chromic coatings attached on an ordinary glass are determined by transfer matrix method considering particle concentration and thickness of the coating. Optimal coating for all climatic conditions are determined by optimization for high energy savings performance while considering visual comfort. Comparison between double glazings with thin thermo-chromic coatings and ordinary double glazing is presented for energy improvement and visual comfort by useful daylight illuminance (UDI) approach. Consequently, up to 26% and 9% energy saving potential are observed in relatively hot and cold climates, respectively.
... Ciancio et al. [35] simulated a typical residential building to investigate the impact of climate change on 19 different cities in Europe and found that the Mediterranean basin will suffer more than other European areas. In Turkey [36] and Qatar [36], the cooling load for the air-conditioned building will increase due to more frequent and longer heatwaves with greater intensity. Asimakopoulous et al. [36] investigated future heating and cooling loads for residential, commercial and educational buildings in 13 different climate zones of Greece and found that cooling demand would increase by 248 % under the A2 scenario of IPCC by the end of this century. ...
... Ciancio et al. [35] simulated a typical residential building to investigate the impact of climate change on 19 different cities in Europe and found that the Mediterranean basin will suffer more than other European areas. In Turkey [36] and Qatar [36], the cooling load for the air-conditioned building will increase due to more frequent and longer heatwaves with greater intensity. Asimakopoulous et al. [36] investigated future heating and cooling loads for residential, commercial and educational buildings in 13 different climate zones of Greece and found that cooling demand would increase by 248 % under the A2 scenario of IPCC by the end of this century. ...
... In Turkey [36] and Qatar [36], the cooling load for the air-conditioned building will increase due to more frequent and longer heatwaves with greater intensity. Asimakopoulous et al. [36] investigated future heating and cooling loads for residential, commercial and educational buildings in 13 different climate zones of Greece and found that cooling demand would increase by 248 % under the A2 scenario of IPCC by the end of this century. Wang et al. [37] created weather files for 2020, 2050 and 2080 and investigated the cooling and heating energy use in 15 USA cities located in seven climatic zones for an office building. ...
Global warming is increasing extreme heat conditions, with existing energy efficiency policies showing trade-offs between mitigation objectives and adaptation to climate change. This research aims to identify the best resilient cooling solutions that should be promoted in the built environment of extremely hot countries to increase their heat resilience capacity. The impact of climate change on climate zones, cooling thermal demand (kWh/m²), and indoor heat discomfort hours (DHh, hours) in buildings is evaluated in different extremely hot dry climates of southern Asia through a parametric analysis for 2020, 2050 and 2080 under the A2 (medium–high) emission scenario. Then, cooling alternatives with higher synergies and trade-offs between energy efficiency (energy consumption) and resiliency to extreme heat (passive survivability) are highlighted. TRNSYS simulation software and ASHRAE criteria were used to characterise climate zones and calculate buildings' cooling needs and discomfort hours. Pakistan, in southern Asia, was selected as a hot reference region characterised by various climatic regions. The simulated scenario shows how Pakistan's extremely hot dry climate surface may increase from 36.9 % to 78.1 % by 2080, increasing annual cooling needs ranging from 20.56 to 66.96 kWh/m² and indoor discomfort hours ranging from 423 to 1267 h. The results demonstrate how the passive solutions with higher synergies between energy savings and indoor comfort hours are, in decreasing order, ventilative cooling, reflective and ventilated roofs, shading in windows, and roof insulation. They can provide energy savings ranging from 13.1 to 7.1 kWh/m² while reducing indoor discomfort by 320 to 131 h for extremely hot climates. Moreover, the sufficiency action related to higher thermostat settings, from 24 to 25 °C to 25–26.5 °C, was the most effective strategy to decrease energy demand. Additionally, there are trade-offs between energy-saving and heat resilience with highly insulated alternatives when ventilation is not adequately addressed. Despite increasing energy savings by 14.4 kWh/m², discomfort hours are increased by 256 hours when air conditioning is unavailable, increasing building overheating by 5.1 %.
... This study assumes little or no improvement in the efficiency of energy technologies and grid mix in accordance with the IPCC's RCP 8.5 climate change scenario [73]. Correspondingly, heating, cooling, and PV systems were also kept unchanged from 2020 to 2080. ...
... When each DDR is examined separately (Fig. 6), the temperature rise difference between DDR-4 comprising mostly inland cities (from 8.5 to 13.7 • C with a rise of 5.2 • C) and DDR-1 composed of coastal cities (from 19 to 23.5 • C with a rise of 4.5 • C) is noticeable. This difference can be attributed to the high heat capacity of water that acts as a stabilizing force moderating the warming [73]. ...
... It should be noted that the current thermal insulation standards result in poor performance in terms of cooling loads as these standards target reducing the heating energy demand. This contradicts the fact that under CC, heating energy demand will decrease drastically while heavily insulated buildings will continue to be challenged with controlling overheating [73]. These results strongly support that current design approaches should consider the future change in the thermal balance in the buildings [85]. ...
This research presents a methodological framework for lifetime energy demand and PV energy generation predictions for a given building considering the CC impacts through multivariate regression models. As a case study, a hypothetical office building in Turkey was selected. An existing linear morphing methodology was utilized to generate future weather files for all 81 cities in Turkey. For each year and city, corresponding weather metrics were calculated, and heating/cooling demand and PV energy generation values were computed through building energy simulations. Obtained data were used to develop two sets of multivariate regression models: (i) models to predict future weather metrics and (ii) models to predict future energy demand and generation. These models allowed lifetime energy demand and generation analysis (including associated GWP and cost) of the building considering CC impacts using only the current weather metrics of its location. For a lifetime of 60 years, considering CC impacts yielded substantially higher cooling (averaging at +0.5 MWh/m² in the warmest region) and lower heating loads (averaging at −0.4 MWh/m² in the coldest region). For Turkey, the carbon intensity and the unit cost of cooling are much higher than those of heating. Therefore, the shift from heating to cooling has significant consequences in lifetime GWP and cost values (averaging +212 kg CO2-eq/m² and +27 $/m², respectively, for the warmest region), emphasizing the importance of the decarbonization of the energy sector. The impact of CC on PV energy generation was limited (all-city average of +0.02 MWh/m² for the building lifetime). Our regression-based approach can be further expanded to include not only various building parameters and types, but also supply-demand matching potentials.
... Another key factor is climate change and violent weather phenomena that occur globally, which clearly indicate the need to reduce pollutant emissions into the atmosphere, including pollution caused by the heating of buildings. The construction industry consumes almost 40% of the total energy in the world, which, moreover, comes from non-renewable energy sources and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The demand for climate protection affects the necessity to apply such material, technological and organisational solutions at the design stage, thanks to which new and modernized buildings will use less energy for heating, ventilation and hot water preparation. ...
... According to the Fourier's law, the heat flux density is proportional to the temperature gradient measured along the heat flow direction (2). ...
The interest in passive construction that has low demand for thermal energy continues to grow every year. It is related to both the reduction in maintenance costs of buildings and the growing environmental awareness in societies. Passive houses are characterised by very good thermal insulation properties of their external partitions. This paper presents the results of tests on the thermal conductivity for three different types of building materials, assuming their use as thermal insulation. The materials were subjected to water absorption tests during long-term immersion. The purpose of this study was to simulate water absorption caused by long-term water exposure. The tests were carried out on a perlite concrete block, a sheet of polyurethane foam applied by spraying and expanded clay in a loose form in three different fractions. The tested insulation materials were selected due to their different form, structure, and porosity characteristics, which largely determined the value of the thermal conductivity. A perlite concrete block is a new, innovative product, of which manufacturer’s data are not yet available as the product is currently at the stage of detailed research. The results were analysed statistically and used in graphs to show the dependence of the value of the thermal conductivity on moisture content of the samples. The purpose of this study was to indicate the importance of the proper incorporation of insulation materials into buildings, their storage before construction and use in the post-construction phase. Building standards for passive houses place high demands on materials used. In order to fully enjoy the advantages of passive buildings, i.e., lower energy consumption and benefits for the natural environment due to lower consumption of energy generated from non-renewable energy sources, it is necessary to use certified building materials and ensure proper use of objects. The studies quoted in this paper indicate to what extent the influence of moisture content negatively affects the properties of insulation materials in external partitions.
... Various studies focusing on the climate change impacts at different regions of Turkey were performed to project future climate change effects and possible outcomes in terms of different perspectives such as forestry, evapotranspiration, crop yield, energy, and tourism activities (Fujihara et al., 2008;Ö zdogan, 2011;Sen et al., 2012;Deidda et al., 2013;Ö ztürk et al., 2015;Sunyer Pinya et al., 2015;Yilmaz, 2015;Demircan et al., 2017;Mehr and Kahya, 2017;Bucak et al., 2018;Dino and Akgül, 2019;Gorguner et al., 2019). Most of these studies cover the analysis based on a few models or for relatively small study areas. ...
... RCM (the latest version of Regional Climate Model system RegCM updated by the International Center for Theoretical Physics) for dynamical downscaling of three GCMs under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. Dino and Akgül (2019), using an ensemble of 14 GCMs, studied the assessment of potential climate change impacts on energy use and CO 2 emissions from residential buildings due to the use of different cooling strategies. The study was performed for four cities (Izmir, Istanbul, Ankara, and Erzurum) in Turkey. ...
Mediterranean Basin is expected to be one of the regions most severely impacted by global climate change. However, the complex interactions of driving forces of climate in the region create a challenge for climate projections for the future. Findings from climate change studies support the inter-model and inter-regional variability of projections on climate change impacts. On the other hand, the studies on the evaluation of the simulation skills of high-resolution climate models for the region particularly for Turkey are still numbered. Hence, this study brings a 14-member ensemble together for the analysis of the performance efficiencies of 12 CORDEX RCMs and two high-resolution climate models, NHRCM and MRI-AGCM, of the Japanese Meteorological Research Institute (MRI). The skill of climate models to reproduce the spatial variability of baseline precipitation climatology is assessed through a benchmark with reference data from 59 ground-based meteorological stations across the study area. Additionally, potential changes in precipitation climatology in the short (2020−2030), medium (2031–2050), and long-term (2051–2100) future are studied with a 14-member ensemble analysis. Projections of 14 models show significant disagreement, especially in the short-term, but most models project a general decrease in the precipitation in the study area in medium- and long-term under both RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. For RCP8.5 scenario, performance based weighted average of five climate models project a decrease in precipitation across the whole study area both for medium- and long-term future.
... These activities include burning fossil fuels for energy production, industrial processes, deforestation, and land-use changes. The release of greenhouse gases from these activities has significantly increased their atmospheric concentrations, resulting in an enhanced greenhouse effect and subsequent climate change [48][49][50] . Besides, climate change has wide-ranging impacts on both natural and human systems. ...
The current context of climate change and imminent global warming is leading to changes in temperature and rainfall patterns worldwide which affect soil moisture, vegetation and soil conditions, the incidence of dry and wet events, and consequently, the occurrence, intensity, and magnitude of fires. Fires harm people’s quality of life as they can disrupt economic activities and affect public health. Additionally, fires damage the environment, accelerating water and wind erosion processes, altering air quality, and contributing to ecosystem degradation. Pampas in Argentina was selected as an example to study fires at a regional scale using Remote Sensing techniques due to its status as one of the most fertile plains in the world and the country’s most densely populated area. The fires are carefully analyzed and described considering three stages: i) pre-fires, ii) fires, and iii) post-fires. Afterwards, fire disaster management plans are described to assess these events, reduce their impacts on society and biodiversity, and minimize the ecosystems’ recovery time. In this sense, this manuscript aims to review the relationships between climate change, global warming, and the occurrence of fires. Additionally, it proposes to analyze the potential of Remote Sensing in analyzing these events at a regional scale to provide the mechanisms and tools necessary for formulating fire disaster management plans.
... These activities include burning fossil fuels for energy production, industrial processes, deforestation, and land-use changes. The release of greenhouse gases from these activities has significantly increased their atmospheric concentrations, resulting in an enhanced greenhouse effect and subsequent climate change [48][49][50] . Besides, climate change has wide-ranging impacts on both natural and human systems. ...
The current context of climate change and imminent global warming is leading to changes in temperature and rainfall patterns worldwide which affect soil moisture, vegetation and soil conditions, the incidence of dry and wet events, and consequently, the occurrence, intensity, and magnitude of fires. Fires harm people’s quality of life as they can disrupt economic activities and affect public health. Additionally, fires damage the environment, accelerating water and wind erosion processes, altering air quality, and contributing to ecosystem degradation. Pampas in Argentina was selected as an example to study fires at a regional scale using Remote Sensing techniques due to its status as one of the most fertile plains in the world and the country’s most densely populated area. The fires are carefully analyzed and described considering three stages: i) pre-fires, ii) fires, and iii) post-fires. Afterwards, fire disaster management plans are described to assess these events, reduce their impacts on society and biodiversity, and minimize the ecosystems’ recovery time. In this sense, this manuscript aims to review the relationships between climate change, global warming, and the occurrence of fires. Additionally, it proposes to analyze the potential of Remote Sensing in analyzing these events at a regional scale to provide the mechanisms and tools necessary for formulating fire disaster management plans.
... These measures help to determine the amount of energy required to maintain a comfortable indoor temperature during a particular period, such as a month or a season. By analyzing HDD and CDD, it is possible to estimate the amount of energy required to heat or cool a building and to design an efficient HVAC system anr are used by many researchers to estimate the impact of climate change on the energy sector ( Matzarakis and Balafoutis 2004;Shen 2017;Bhatnagar, Mathur, and Garg 2018;Dino and Meral Akgül 2019). ...
The urban heat island (UHI) effect is a well-documented phenomenon caused by urbanization, which refers to the difference between urban and rural temperatures. The rise in urban temperatures due to UHI poses a threat to the health and productivity of urban populations, while also affecting building energy usage by increasing energy consumption for cooling and decreasing it for heating. However, there is a lack of research on the specific impact of UHI on energy consumption in buildings using both urban and rural climatic data. The absence of a user-friendly workflow to incorporate this information into weather files used by architects, engineers, and urban planners is one of the primary reasons for this gap in understanding. To fill this gap, this study proposes a novel parametric workflow that combines the Local Climate Zones (LCZs) classification system and the Urban Weather Generator (UWG) tool to generate weather datasets that accurately incorporate the UHI effect. The proposed approach aims to estimate the UHI intensity at the city canopy level more accurately than existing methods. The methodology simulates UHI intensity over a year of simulation using meteorological weather data, and the UWG model provides urban weather data in EnergyPlus Weather format, which can be used for further use such as evaluating the UHI impacts on building energy performance or investigating the efficacy of mitigation strategies. The study investigates the impact of canopy heat islands on the energy consumption of different building types across seven cities in the United States using the proposed workflow. The results show that LCZ 1-Compact high-rise had the highest annual temperature variation, while LCZ 6-Open low-rise recorded the lowest maximum UHI intensity. The impact of UHI was found to be most severe in cities located in hot-dry regions, while cities in mixed-humid regions experienced the least effect. The study also found that heavy industry sites exhibit higher UHI intensity compared to many other LCZs. The results of this study highlight the importance of accounting for UHI impacts in building energy simulations and inform building design and energy management strategies to reduce energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions. The proposed methodology has the potential to significantly contribute to the understanding of UHI effects and inform efforts to mitigate them in urban areas.
... Climate change is predicted to significantly affect the cooling and heating in buildings because of changes to the weather features in future years [6][7][8]. The impacts of climate change on buildings' energy consumption could be both negative and positive [9]. The extent of these effects is still unclear [10]. ...
... 10 [5]. Binaların iklim değişikliği üzerindeki etkisinin yanı sıra iklim değişikliğinin de bina sistemlerinin kapasitesinde uyumsuzluk, aşırı yüklenme, arızalanma ve bina performansında verimsizlik gibi binalar üzerinde önemli etkileri olması beklenmektedir [6,7]. Ayrıca, birçok binanın uygunsuz yapı fiziği sebebiyle artan sıcaklıklar genel olarak ısıtma talebinde azalmaya ve soğutma talebinde artışa, dolayısıyla iklimlendirme sistemleri (klima) ihtiyacında ciddi bir artışa neden olmaktadır [8][9][10]. ...
İklim ve yapılı çevre, güçlü ve dinamik bir ilişki içindedir. Bu ilişki, iklim değişikliği krizi ile son yıllarda daha da önem kazanmıştır. Bu bağlamda, binaların çevresel yüklerinin azaltılması ve bina kullanıcılarının ısıl konforunun ve sağlığının korunması daha da kritik bir hale gelmiştir. İklim değişikliği araştırmalarında eğitim binaları yüksek iç yükleri, kendine özgü bina kullanım profilleri ve ana kullanıcılarının öğrenciler olması sebebi ile diğer bina tipolojilerinden ayrılır. Ayrıca, öğrenciler yaşları, vücutları ve metabolizmalarındaki farklılıklar sebebi ile ısıl konfor ve iç ortam hava kalitesine karşı daha hassastır. Bu sebepler ile, eğitim binalarında iklim değişikliği çerçevesinde performans iyileştirmesi gerekli hale gelmektedir. Enerji kaybını azaltmak ve ısıl konfor dengesini sağlamak için en etkili yöntemlerden biri, pencerelerin parametrelerini optimize etmektir. Bu çalışma, iklim değişikliğinin eğitim binası enerji ve ısıl performansı üzerindeki etkilerini ve pencere performansına dayalı pasif iyileştirme senaryolarının etkinliğini makine öğrenmesi ve istatistiksel analizler ile incelemektedir. Araştırma bina simülasyonlarına dayalı, dört aşamalı bir yaklaşıma dayanmaktadır ve sırasıyla (i) iklim değişikliği senaryosu ile modifiye edilmiş iklim veri setlerinin oluşturulması ve analizi, (ii) mevcut bina üzerinde iklim değişikliği etki analizi, (iii) iyileştirme senaryolarının karşılaştırmalı analizi ve (iv) makine öğrenmesine dayalı tahmin modelleri analizi adımlarını takip eder. Seçilen performans göstergelerinin (bina enerji tüketimi ve kullanıcı ısıl konforu) değerlendirilmesi için Ankara'daki mevcut bir ortaokul binası örnek vaka olarak seçilmiştir. Farklı pencere parametreleriyle, olası 2025 farklı iyileştirme senaryosu parametrik olarak modellenmiştir. Performans simülasyonları sonucunda üretilen tüm veri betimsel istatistik yöntemleriyle incelendikten sonra, verinin bir alt kümesi ile Rastgele Orman (RO) tahmin modelleri eğitilmiştir. Her bir performans göstergesi için farklı pencere parametrelerinin önemi, 10 kat çapraz doğrulama yöntemiyle RO modelleri öznitelik önemleri hesaplanarak sıralanmıştır. RO modelleriyle yapılan performans tahminleri gerçek değerlerinden sadece ortalama %2 sapmakta ve yüksek tahmin kapasitesi göstermektedir. Öznitelik önem değerleri inceliğinde pencere SHGC değerinin test edilen değişkenler arasında performansa dayalı iyileştirme senaryolarının en önemli parametresi olduğu gözlemlenmiştir. Ayrıca güçlendirme senaryoları ile toplam enerji tüketimi %50'ye varan azalma gösterirken, iç mekan ısıl konforunda önemli bir iyileşme gözlemlenmektedir. Bu çalışmanın sonuçları, mevcut eğitim binalarında maksimum etki için cam performans kriterlerinin ve en etkili kombinasyon seçiminin önemini vurgulamaktadır. Sonuçlar, binaların iklim değişikliğine adaptasyonu süreçlerinde makine öğrenmesinin etkin bir şekilde kullanılabileceğini göstermektedir. Çalışmada kullanılan yöntem farklı bina parametrelerini ve bina teknolojilerini kapsayacak şekilde genişletilebilir.
... The production of fossil fuels generates carbon emissions, which in turn cause climate change. In recent decades, environmental deterioration has been one of the world's most pressing concerns (Dino et al., 2019;Tarroja et al., 2018). Numerous factors, including energy generation from traditional resources, carbon emissions, and greenhouse gas emissions, contribute to this phenomenon. ...
... The current state of the global climate presents a significant challenge to all of humanity. At present, greenhouse gas emissions, represented by carbon dioxide, have been exacerbating the global climate crisis [1][2][3]. In 2020, General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed that "China will increase its autonomous national contribution, adopt more zealous policies and measures, and strive to peak CO2 emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060" (also known as the "double carbon targets") in response to the dire ecological and environmental situation [4]. ...
Carbon control has become a key strategy in the high-quality development (HQD) phase of emerging countries, but the spillover effects of implementing carbon control instruments on HQD remain to be verified. In order to explore the realistic level of HQD in China and the mechanism of how carbon controls impact on it, this paper analyzes the regional differences and spatio-temporal dynamics of HQD in China by using Chinese provincial panel data from 2006 to 2019. This study evaluated the implications of a regionally implemented carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) on HQD by using the difference-in-differences (DID) model. The results show that the overall level of HQD in China’s provinces continues to rise. The level of HQD in most provinces showed a transition from low to high and then stabilization. Over the sample period, the national average HQD index increased from 18.95 to 29.96, a growth rate of 58.1%. There was significant regional heterogeneity in HQD. The highest HQD indices in the eastern, central and western regions were 35.67, 27.52 and 24.78, respectively. The level of HQD in the eastern regions was much higher than in the central and western areas. Further analysis revealed that ETS was able to significantly increase the overall level of HQD. Having found that there is regional heterogeneity in HQD, this research examines the specific effects of ETS on HQD and discovers that ETS supports regional HQD in the eastern and central areas, but has no significant influence on HQD in the western region. The robustness of the results was confirmed by the use of parallel trend tests, lagged effects, the removal of environmental disturbances and the replacement of evaluation variables or models. The above findings can be used as a reference for formulating low-carbon policy and promoting HQD levels.
... Spring and summer heat waves in the Mediterranean basin seriously threaten the region's agricultural output. Both the number of hot days and the average temperature in Turkey have been rising over the previous several decades, with 2018 and 2019 ranking as the second and fourth hottest years, respectively, during the past 50 years [12,13]. Temperatures in the nation are projected to rise by 2-3 • C by 2040 [14]. ...
Turkey is increasingly concerned about the effects of climate change, weather unpredictability, and severe events on agricultural production, food loss, and livelihoods. Turkey has long struggled against climate variability and catastrophic climatic events to prevent further declines in agricultural output. This study assessed the risk of climate change in Turkey from the perspective of loss in food grains and food security domain considering exposure to extreme climate events using the data from 1991 to 2019. This paper makes a theoretical contribution to the literature by identifying the relationship between food waste and food import, food prices and economic growth. It also makes an empirical contribution by administering and econometrically analyzing the impact of the loss of food grains on the aforementioned independent variables. Policy implications for the current national agriculture policy were provided using the vector auto-regression (VAR) model and derivative analysis. Food grain loss negatively correlates with food security since it increases reliance on food imports from outside. Moreover, the losses in food supplies contributes greatly to price increases. The GDP growth rate, however, was shown to be a feeble instigator. Climate change threatens food security, and the country’s progress toward sustainable development objectives is hampered in general, particularly concerning no poverty and zero hunger goals. In conclusion, climate change and its associated factors harm Turkey’s food security and economy.
... Most climate change impact studies that have been conducted to evaluate future building energy performance have concluded that the space-cooling requirements will increase in the future [12][13][14][15][16]. Global warming and micro-climatic impacts, such as urban heat islands (UHIs), will be the key factors that are responsible for thermal discomfort in the built environment. ...
India’s fossil-fuel-based energy dependency is up to 68%, with the commercial and residential sectors contributing to the rise of building energy demand, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. Several studies have shown that the increasing building energy demand is associated with increased space-cooling ownership and building footprint. The energy demand is predicted to grow further with the conditions of global warming and the phenomenon of urban heat islands. Building designers have been using state-of-the-art transient simulation tools to evaluate energy-efficient envelopes with present-day weather files that are generated with historical weather datasets for any specific location. Designing buildings with historical climatic conditions makes the buildings vulnerable to the predicted climate change impacts. In this paper, a weather file generator was developed to generate Indian future weather files using a geo-filtering-based spatial technique, as well as the temporal downscaling and machine learning (ML)-based bias correction approach proposed by Belcher et al. The future weather files of the three representative concentration pathways of 2.6, 4.5, and 8.5 could be generated for the years 2030, 2050, 2070, 2090, and 2100. Currently, the outputs of the second-generation Canadian Earth System Model are being used to create future weather files that will aid architects, urban designers, and planners in developing a built environment that is resilient to climate change. The novelty lies in using observed historical data from present-day weather files on the typical meteorological year for testing and training ML models. The typical meteorological weather files are composed of the concatenation of the monthly weather datasets from different years, which are referred to for testing and training ML models for bias correction.
... Similarly, in the paper of Kalaycıoğlu, modified BepTr files have been used [30]. Weather files of Energyplus also have been used by Solmaz et al. [31] and Dino and Akgül [32]. ...
The most important parameter which affects the results of building energy analysis is the weather data and it can be obtained by different methods for the same location. Although lots of studies have been conducted for Türkiye, it was seen that the impact of different weather data for the same location has never been investigated. The aims of this study were to compare the heating and cooling demands of the buildings with respect to different weather files. Building loads were calculated using five different meteorological source data. Calculations are made for eight cities which represent heating and cooling dominated climates of Türkiye. Calculation procedure of internal heat gain was explained in detail. All simulations were performed using Energyplus v9.2. The findings of the comparison showed that although some results are similar to each other for some weather files, they could have great variances in the energy analysis also. A common missing meteorological data-filling algorithm may be developed in order to reduce the deviations in energy analysis results.
Cite this article as: Acar U, Kaşka Ö, Tokgöz N. The effects of different typical meteorological year data onthe heating and cooling demand of buildings: Case study of Turkey. J Ther Eng 2022;8(5):667-680.
... cooling degrees days) and decrease the heating load (e.g. heating degrees days) in various climate zones Arima et al., 2016;Cao et al., 2017;Dino and Meral Akgül, 2019;Meng et al., 2018;Triana et al., 2018;Yalew et al., 2020;Yang et al., 2014). This phenomenon is also reported in several studies in Hong Kong (Chan et al., 2012;Lam et al., 2010a,b;Lim and Yun, 2017). ...
Temperature and population growth are key drivers of energy consumption. However, the relative importance of climatic and socioeconomic factors driving energy consumption at different temporal scales is not well-understood. Therefore, we developed a time-series decomposition method to attribute the relative importance of climatic (heat index and monsoon index) and socioeconomic variables to domestic energy consumption in Hong Kong from 1981-2015. The same method was used for Singapore from 2005-2015 to test the transferability of our time-series method. Population growth and GDP were the primary drivers for domestic energy consumption in Hong Kong from 1981-2015, but the heat index became the primary driver from 2005-2015 instead. The monsoon and heat indexes were the primary drivers of domestic energy consumption in Singapore from 2005-2015. Climate change will increase air temperatures by 2-5 • C for Hong Kong and Singapore by 2100. For RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, Singapore shows a linear relationship between temperature and domestic energy consumption, whereas the relationship is non-linear in Hong Kong. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the impact of climatic change on monsoon mechanism and heat index, which can predict future cooling demand and help achieve sustainable development goals.
... Enhancing heat waves and the fresh water drought, along with economic growth and increase of population, are anticipated to have corollaries for economic activity, energy consumption, and human health [22]. More negative involvements contain infrequent scarcities, poor air nature and quality, diminishing crop efficiency, and a raised factor of vegetation and forest fires [23]. ...
This paper focuses on climate change in Turkey caused by energy consumption using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag and Toda-Yamamoto causality analysis. The motivation and aim are: Finding evidence of causality for the relationship between energy consumption, growing economies and climate change depending on parameters that vary over time, which are observed and argued through political implications. Temperature and precipitation are the dependent variables for climate change; energy types and Gross Domestic Product per capita are the independent variables for economic determiners. Data was collected annually from various institutions between 1980-2019. According to the Toda-Yamamoto tests, a negative relationship is determined between renewable energy consumption and temperature in both the short and long term. The results reveal that a 1% increase in renewable energy reduces the temperature by 0.031%. The increase of renewable energy may help in decreasing temperature. Precipitation and non-renewable energy consumption have a positive relationship in both the short and long term, with a 1% increase in non-renewable energy consumption causing a 0.175% increase in precipitation, indicating a negative effect on climate change. Encouraging renewable energy consumption through government incentives can be a powerful solution to decrease the negative effects of climate change in Turkey.
... Although the aim of this study was to reduce thermal energy for air conditioning in this building, no retrofit strategies were proposed. Similarly, Dascalaki et al. [28] provided a simple assessment of possible passive and active retrofit scenarios applied to the Greek residential stock for 2020 and 2030, in order to enhance energy savings, but with no optimization approach. A residential single-family case study in Benevento (Italy) was analysed by De Masi et al. [29] under 2050 and 2080 future climate scenarios. ...
Retrofitting the existing building stock is widely accepted as a crucial factor to reaching 2030 and 2050 climate and energy targets, given that the building sector is among the top three most dominant energy consumers. This paper presents a bottom-up study which uses calibrated and parameterized energy stock models (building archetypes), while also incorporating building stock information from a large database. The thermal performance of the existing social housing stock of southern Spain is assessed through dynamic simulation under present and future climate change scenarios. Subsequently, several passive and low-cost operation-related strategies are numerically optimized through genetic algorithms to determine the best retrofit solutions, taking into consideration global warming scenarios. A multi-objective decision analysis is carried out by optimizing annual overheating hours (%), annual undercooling hours (%), and investment costs (€/m²). Among the conclusions reported, it is important to note the feasibility of implementing low-cost retrofit strategies considering investment costs of up to around 200 €/m², which would lead to average annual overheating and undercooling hours below 55 % and 45 %, respectively. However, retrofit solutions exclusively based on passive and low-cost operation measures were proven to be significantly limited to improve thermal comfort results in the social stock.
... The global economy has achieved rapid development with the wave of globalization [1][2][3]. However, at the same time, problems such as climate change and environmental deterioration caused by growing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have become increasingly prominent [4][5][6]. In the research field of international trade, scholars such as Bodansky and Lawrence [7], McAuslanda and Millimet [8], and Shahbaz et al. [9] etc. have put forward different theories on the relationship between trade and the environment. ...
With the rapid growth of China’s export trade and increasing pressure of domestic carbon emission reduction, the issue of carbon embodied in export trade has attracted increasing attention from academic circles. This paper has constructed a calculation model for embodied carbon in China’s export trade by using the multi-region input-output model and the international input-output data from the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) database in order to calculate the amount of embodied carbon. Our objective is to analyze the main source industry and specific sectors of embodied carbon in China’s export trade, and to provide a quantitative basis for emission reduction under the “carbon neutrality” strategy. The findings reveal that the embodied carbon in China’s export trade mainly comes from the secondary industry, which accounts for more than 90% of the total embodied carbon in export trade, while the proportions of embodied carbon in the primary industry and the tertiary industry are relatively low, about 1% and 5–7%, respectively. In terms of specific sectors, the crop and animal production and hunting sectors have the largest share (over 60%) of embodied carbon in the export trade of the primary industry; in the export trade of the secondary industry, the main sources of embodied carbon are the manufacturing sector and the power, gas, steam and air-conditioning supply sectors, respectively accounting for around 50% and 45% of the total embodied carbon in the export trade of the secondary industry; as for the tertiary industry, the transport and storage sectors have the largest share of embodied carbon in the export trade, which is around 70%. Based on the above research results, this paper has provided relevant policy recommendations, which are optimizing the export structure, improving the energy consumption structure and the carbon emissions trading system.
... According to the International Energy Agency (EAI), to keep global warming below 2 °C, CO2 emissions need to be reduced by 77% by 2050. Climate change is estimated to have an effect on the environment [2]. A building provides a comfortable indoor environment, and the change in outdoor climate will affect building energy consumption. ...
Climate change is one of the major problems of the planet. The atmosphere is overloaded with carbon dioxide caused by fossil fuels that are burned for energy. Almost 40 percent of the total energy worldwide is used by the building sector, which comes from non-renewable sources and contributes up to 30% of annual greenhouse gas emissions globally. The building sector in Iran accounts for 33.8% of Iran’s total energy usage. Within the building sector, the energy consumption of Iranian educational buildings is 2.5 times higher than educational buildings in developed countries. One of the most effective ways of reducing global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions is retrofitting existing buildings. This study aims to investigate whether a particular energy-optimized design under the present climate conditions would respond effectively to future climate change. This can help designers make a better decision on an optimal model, which can remain optimal over the years based on climate change. For methodological purposes, multistage optimization was used to retrofit an existing educational building. Specifically, the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) was chosen to minimize the cooling and heating load, as well as consider investment costs for present and future weather files, using the jEPlus tool. Furthermore, the TOPSIS method was used to identify the best set of retrofit measures. For this purpose, a four-story educational building in Tehran was modeled on Design Builder software as a case study to provide a better understanding for researchers of how to effectively retrofit a building to achieve a nearly zero energy building considering climate change. The results show that the optimized solution for the present weather file does not remain the optimized solution in 2080. Moreover, it is shown that to have an optimized building in regard to future weather files, the model should be designed for the future weather conditions. This study shows that if the building becomes optimized using the present weather file the total energy consumption will be reduced by 65.14% and 86.18% if using the future weather file. These two figures are obtained by implementing active and passive measures and show the priority of using the future weather file for designers. Using PV panels also, this building is capable of becoming a nearly net zero building, which would produce about 90% of its own energy demands.
... It's particularly significant to discuss the influence of climate change on human body's awareness in the perspective of CCI (Odnoletkova and Patzek, 2021). Moreover, conducting long-term CCI evaluation research with daily ground monitoring data for one thing strengthen the understanding of climate change and its influences, and for another provide scientific guidance for the regulation of human settlement assessment, urban and rural planning, climate event response, and the corresponding adaptive strategies (Aminipouri et al., 2019;Dino and Meral Akgül, 2019;Summa et al., 2020). ...
Regional Climatic Comfort Index (CCI) deteriorated significantly due to the climate change and anthropogenic interference. Knowledge regarding the long-term temporal dynamics of CCI in typical regions should be strengthened. In this study, we analyze the temporal and spatial evolution of CCI from 1969 to 2018 in Guangdong Province, based on meteorological indicators, including heat, humidity, wind and cloth loading etc.. Additionally, the population exposure to climate unconformity was examined since 1990 with the help of population data. Our study found that: (1) the warming and humidifying of the summer climate served as the main driving force for the continuous deterioration of CCI, with the comfortable days decreased by 1.06d/10a and the extremely muggy days increased by 2.83d/10a; (2) spatially, the lowest climate comfortability concentrated in southwestern Guangdong with more than 50 uncomfortable days each year, while the climate comfortability in northeastern Guangdong tends to deteriorated whit higher rate, which can reach as high as 6d/10a; (3) in summer, the population exposure to uncomfortable climate highly centralized in the Pearl River Delta, Shantou, Jieyang, and the surrounding areas, and both area and population exposure showed increasing trends. Particularly, Shenzhen held the highest growth rate of population exposure with an increase rate of 2.94 million/10a; (4) although the discomfort distribution and deterioration rate vary across the province, the spatial heterogeneity of comfortability is diminishing in Guangdong Province. This study will provide scientific reference for regional urban planning, thermal environment improvement, local resident health risk analysis, and key strategy implementation, etc.
The Urban Heat Island (UHI), which causes urban areas to be warmer than rural counterparts, impacts buildings' energy demands for heating and cooling. Conventional weather data, typically gathered at non-urban sites like airports, are used to create Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) files for building energy assessments. However, this data doesn't account for urban temperature effects, impacting the accuracy of these assessments. This study proposes a novel methodology that couples Local Climate Zones (LCZs) with the Urban Weather Generator (UWG) to produce urban-specific weather data reflecting UHI effects for more accurate energy simulations. LCZs categorize urban neighborhoods into landscape types based on building heights, proximity, greenspace, etc., which regulate the magnitude of the UHI. The UWG uses LCZ parameters to estimate UHI intensity based on existing weather conditions. Together, they generate city-specific TMY files tailored to individual neighborhoods. Here, modified TMY files for seven U.S. cities located in different climates, were generated and used in residential building energy simulations. The UHI effect increases Cooling Degree Days (CDD) and decreases Heating Degree Days (HDD), but energy demand impacts vary by city and LCZ type. This methodology provides a simple means for incorporating the impact of UHI into building and urban energy simulations.
Buildings have the potential to mitigate climate change effects by integrating energy-efficient solutions. Building resilient design strategies based on forthcoming weather predictions offers an effective means of adaptation. The study focuses on the impact of climate change on residential buildings in Istanbul and Izmir, two Turkish cities with distinctive climate characteristics. By creating future weather scenarios and conducting dynamic simulations, buildings’ and improvement measures’ performance under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 climate scenarios and short- and long-term periods are evaluated. The findings reveal varying degrees of climate change impact on the two regions, with decreased heating degree days (HDDs) and increased cooling degree days (CDDs). Notably, the RCP 8.5 scenario projects significant temperature increases, with a rise of 4.3 °C in Istanbul and 5 °C in Izmir, leading to profound consequences for buildings. The CDD can be doubled in July and reach 292 in Izmir and quadrupled, reaching 158 in Istanbul. Without retrofit, in a well-naturally ventilated building, primary heating energy consumption can be decreased by 36–41 %, while primary cooling energy consumption tripled in both cities. With the aid of improvements, a ∼ 5–6 °C decrease was observed in the highest temperature predictions in naturally ventilated spaces in summer in Istanbul, while a ∼ 4–5 °C decrease was observed in Izmir.
Introductions- Liveable housing environments face the menace of global climate change. In-frastructure (including buildings and houses) continuously experiences significant impacts ex-acerbated by natural variability in climate. The study addressed how climate change impacts the resilience of residential buildings, increased maintenance frequency, and the wellbeing and comfort of residents in UK residential buildings. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study used deductive reasoning and an empirical epis-temological methodology as a data-collecting basis to evaluate primary information obtained via a questionnaire. Regression analysis was ultimately employed to analyse the collected da-ta. Result/Discussions: The findings show a significant relationship between climate change and the wellbeing of the occupants of UK residential buildings. Also, the results show that social wellbeing is more important to the occupants than mental and physical wellbeing. It reveals that residential buildings in the UK suffer the cost of maintenance due to continuous reduc-tion in the building fabric's resilience to the impacts of climate change; for instance, a recent increase in rainfall/storms results in unprecedented flooding, which continues to damage the UK residential building fabrics.
The European Union, through the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and the Energy Efficiency Directive, has been establishing requirements and expectations regarding energy savings and efficiency in buildings. Educational buildings comprise a significant part of public buildings that should lead the way in the energy retrofitting of existing building stock. The present study aims to create intelligent school complexes that will be energy upgraded to meet the need for reduced energy consumption in the public sector in order to comply with EU guidelines, optimize the sense of comfort, introduce the renewable energy and enhance sustainable mobility by creating electric charging stations for vehicles. Retrofitting approaches consider thermal insulation of the building envelope, replacement of heating and lighting system with more efficient ones and installation of building management system for the creation of an electronic application that will monitor the energy status of the building in real time and will train users in the proper use of new energy management technologies from RES. The overall objective of the project is to create Intelligent Buildings Standards of Nearly Zero Consumption which promote an overall ecological character of public buildings demonstrating their social role.
Recently, European governments have been setting more regulations and incentives to encourage the adoption of energy efficiency measures and systemic retrofitting of existing residential buildings (Episcope, 2016). In the European Union (EU) and its member states, energy has become a significant issue. It has assumed a priority status in terms of its urgency as a problem and the resulting action plans reflect and highlight its importance. The emergency plans now in place are directed to entire communities and reveal the importance of energy conservation across Europe. In responding to this challenge for energy conservation, one feature of the various existing schemes is an examination of ongoing consumer trends and their effects on climate change. The problem with energy is that there is a progressive and inexorable rise in its cost and an increasing demand for fossil fuel use. At the same time, contributing to the eradication of energy poverty is one of the main synergies with mitigation efforts, through improvements in energy efficiency of residential buildings aiming to less energy consumption (Santamouris et al., 2007; Urge-vorsatz & Herrero, 2012; Santamouris, 2016). These three key indicators have led to a turning point in the importance of energy reduction. Couched within this emerging energy debate in the EU and its member states, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation 2014-2020 includes the need to legislate policy priorities of the Europe 2020 strategy in its action plan (Loga et al., 2016). In Cyprus, the number of postwar residential building stock that needs to achieve the EU 2020 energy consumption reduction targets has surged (Dascalaki et al., 2016).
The global warming associated with climate change predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is expected to deteriorate the indoor climate of free-running buildings. Features like proper orientation and wall thickness are important for the design of a building that is resilient to the impact of climate change. However, the implementation of these features is sometimes difficult, especially in a rugged hilly location. A whole building simulation was performed using DesignBuilder for an existing 3-storey free running multi-family concrete building located in the sub-Himalayan region of eastern India, for thermal comfort and energy demand during the present and the climate change scenarios of 2050 and 2080. The results show an increasing trend in the indoor operative temperature during the future climatic scenario, with the condition inside the top roof-exposed floor deteriorating the most. A decrease of 59.8% and 81.2% in the annual heating energy and an increase of 221.9% and 467.0% in the annual cooling energy were predicted for the future climate of 2050 and 2080 compared to the present. Parametric analysis performed considering orientation, wall U-value, infiltration rate and window-to- wall ratios revealed that the east/south-east facing orientation would perform the best with
gard to overheating due to climate change. Further, the use of autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) brick is recommended along with the decrease in air infiltration rate and window-to-wall ratio to improve the thermal performance of the indoor environment. In addition, we have also proposed a method to assess the under-cooling of an indoor environment.
Energy benchmarking in buildings is a significant analytical method to determine and classify the energy performance of buildings. The objective of the present paper is to establish a comprehensive data-driven energy benchmark model for banking buildings. In this context, 587 bank branches are selected to cover every climatic region in Turkey, with more than 210,000 data obtained from the installed energy analyzers and building energy audits. A mathematical model is developed and verified to define the EUI of the existing bank branches. Calculated energy scores and benchmark study implied an energy efficiency potential across the sector. Investigating the results of underperforming buildings, the building shell and construction date are found to be significant. As results indicated an efficiency potential, a scenario-based energy benchmark model is proposed based on the new insulation regulations in Turkey to see the possible energy consumption and carbon gas emission reductions. The developed model is adapted to the scenario-based model by revising U-values concerning the regulation and climate zones. The scenario-based strategy has led to a 2136.7 MWh/year reduction in energy consumption. The total EUI was found to decrease from 159.44 to 124.35 kWh/m2year, also resulting in a 20.5% improvement equal to 2057.3 equivalent tons of CO2/year in annual GHG emissions with the application of new regulations.
This book investigates energy use and measures to improve the energy efficiency of public housing, using post-war social housing development estates in Cyprus as its example. On this Mediterranean island, which experiences hot and humid temperatures throughout the year, residential buildings need to adapt to the climate to improve the thermal comfort of their occupants. The book assesses the domestic energy use of inefficiently built residential tower blocks and their occupants’ thermal comfort by considering the significant impact of overheating risks on energy consumption and occupants’ thermal comfort and well-being, with the intention of evaluating the current energy performance of base-case representative residential tower blocks (RTBs). In particular, considering the cooling energy demand in the summer, using Famagusta, Cyprus as a case study. It seeks to identify the impact of occupancy patterns and habitual adaptive behaviour of households on home energy performance in order to provide bases for the information needed to calibrate building energy performance of targeted households.
Energy modeling of the existing building stock as a decision-making tool for governments is necessary for drafting national roadmaps to the carbon neutrality of the built heritage. A set of 297 building energy models is stochastically generated using architectural archetypes and national information. The energy models are created and simulated in batch mode using R and EnergyPlus, and tested using the weather files of the Metropolitan region of Chile under seven scenarios; the historical climate and six climatology modeling scenarios by 2050. After predicting the thermal behaviour of the simulated models, hours of discomfort and space heating energy use are analyzed, comparing the results under the historical climate against the six projected climates. Results show that the hours of discomfort are strongly impacted by the number of building floors and moderately by the window-to-wall glazing ratio. Considering that the residential air conditioning in Chile is a new and fast-growing market, retrofit strategies in the Metropolitan region should consider the risk of overheating in dwellings under different climate change scenarios.
The high energy consumption and associated carbon emissions due to the heating and cooling of buildings create a heavy environmental burden. One of the cost-efficient solutions to reduce the heating and cooling demands is to incorporate phase change materials (PCMs) in the building components, increasing the thermal mass of the building and providing latent heat thermal storage. However, the rising temperatures over the years will alter the effectiveness of PCM in building envelopes. In this study, four cities in Turkey with different climatic characteristics were selected. For each city, future weather files representing the climatic conditions of 2050 and 2080 were generated from the current weather data using CCWorldWeatherGen. A typical office building that utilizes gypsum wallboards was modeled with EnergyPlus as a reference case. Alternative energy models were generated by modifying the wallboard compositions (PCM melting temperature: 19-27°C). The building’s annual heating and cooling energy demands were calculated for each city, year, and wallboard alternative. Generated data were analyzed to evaluate the future efficiency of the wallboards with the changing climate over the years in order to maximize the long-term performance gains from PCM incorporating wallboards. The results showed that the selection of the optimum PCM melting temperature of a location should not only depend on thermo-physical and layer properties of the PCM wallboard as the optimum melting temperature of the PCM is subject to change with rising temperatures. The impact of climate change should be considered to fully evaluate the long-term performance of the PCM wallboard in terms of energy use and CO 2 emissions.
Thermo-responsive smart windows have attracted considerable attention due to their solar modulation ability and energy-saving performances. Researchers focus on ionic surfactants to adjust the lower critical solution temperatures (LCSTs). However, few researchers explored the effect and mechanism of nonionic surfactants. Hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) is an excellent thermo-responsive candidate for smart windows due to its nontoxicity and zero energy input. Herein, the effect of nonionic surfactants on HPC optical properties was investigated. The solar spectrum transmittance was evaluated as a function of nonionic surfactant types and concentrations. The addition of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) significantly improved solar modulation ability(ΔTsol). The enhancement was due to the formation of larger aggregates of HPC and PVP molecules. The optimal PVP loading was 1.5 wt%, which resulted in a 69.75% ΔTsol enhancement and a 1.35 °C reduction in the LCST compared with pure HPC solution. PVP would serve as a cost-effective additive to improve HPC optical properties. Heating conditions also made contributions to HPC phase separation. The energy-saving experiment verified a 4.89 °C reduction in room temperature, which confirmed the energy-saving performance. This research explains the relationship between HPC and nonionic surfactants and extends the application of HPC to smart windows.
Due to the significant increase in the energy demand, mainly driven by air conditioning electrical loads in residential and industrial sectors of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to climate change and population increase. The use of solar cooling technology in air conditioning systems becomes crucial. In this paper, solar-powered absorption cooling system based on a LiBr–H2O was simulated and optimized for a house in UAE. The TRANSYS software was used for the simulations of the house under real-life conditions throughout the worst week scenarios. The Coefficient of performance (COP) of the proposed system was found to be 0.793. The optimization results showed that the latitude of the UAE is the optimum tilt angle for the evacuated tube, while the 40 m² and 1 m³ are optimum for the area of the evacuated tube and the volume of a hot water storage tank at 0.73 solar fractions. Furthermore, the life cycle analysis results show that the solar-powered absorption cooling system would cost 43.2%, consume the energy of 8.5%, and produces a carbon footprint of 8.7% of the cost, energy consumption, and production of the carbon footprint of the typical vapor compression system, respectively.
During the last decades, the increasing need to ensure building performance during architectural design practices has led to highly interactive relations between architecture and various other disciplines, in which performance concepts are tightly integrated into the building design process. Computational tools supporting performative architectural design processes make this interdisciplinary integration possible. The critical consequence of the early consideration of performative principles and the collaborative synthesis process is widely emphasized both in theory and practice. This research aims to contribute to the current understanding of performance-based architectural design practices by investigating the key performance concepts, supporting computational tools and finally the current practices of performative design through case studies. The main research aim is to explore, understand and conceptualize the performative architectural design and the existing practices. It is also aimed to demonstrate the integrated design strategies along with the potentials of computational design throughout the design process including early phases.
Background: Bioclimatic design is an approach based on local climate which improves thermal qualities and indoor comfort. Buildings follow this process to minimize negative effects on the environment. However, this approach is still not suitable in developed countries. This study aims to investigate Mediterranean local bioclimatic strategies’ impact on thermal comfort efficiency in housing, by examining architectural elements and treatments.
Methods: We adopted a descriptive, analytical, and comparative methodology, complemented with a software simulation, within a qualitative and quantitative approach. Investigation and methodological tools were based on technical information including plans, elevations, photos, and documentation. The approach consisted of multiple stages: a literature review interpreting the concept of bioclimatic design, as well as thermal comfort variables and common Mediterranean building features. Moreover, the paper showcases three examples of successful Mediterranean passive houses. Furthermore, the paper presents a case- studyhouse in Alex West, Alexandria, designed in the Mediterranean Revival style.
Results: The results showed that the most influencing building features on thermal comfort were the low-pitched roofs and the top chimney, which achieved 12.6% and 5% improvement in the summer and 13% and 6.8% in winter, respectively. The pergola and porch elements barely had an effect when placed on the northern façade. However, on the southern façade, a positive contribution in the summer by 1.4% and 3.4% respectively were reported, but a slight negative impact in winter by 0.5% and 2% respectively.
Conclusions : We examined the impact of common Mediterranean building features , and compared thermal comfort results between case-study houses. Features focusing on passive design for cooling rather than heating, allowing wind flow for maximized natural ventilation, using ventilated pitched roof spaces, using sun shading elements in the proper facades and angles, help passive thermal regulation. The study proposes recommendations for optimizing thermal comfort in residential buildings in Alexandria, Egypt.
Purpose
The residential buildings sector has a high priority in the climate change adaptation process due to significant CO 2 emissions, high energy consumption and negative environmental impacts. The article investigates how, conversely speaking, the residential buildings will be affected by climate change, and how to improve existing structures and support long-term decisions.
Design/methodology/approach
The climate dataset was created using the scenarios determined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and this was used in the study. Different building envelope and Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems scenarios have been developed and simulated. Then, the best scenario was determined with comparative results, and recommendations were developed.
Findings
The findings reveal that future temperature-increase will significantly impact buildings' cooling and heating energy use. As the outdoor air temperatures increase due to climate change, the heating loads of the buildings decrease, and the cooling loads increase significantly. While the heating energy consumption of the house was calculated at 170.85 kWh/m ² in 2020, this value shall decrease significantly to 115.01 kWh/m ² in 2080. On the other hand, the cooling energy doubled between 2020 and 2080 and reached 106.95 kWh/m ² from 53.14 kWh/m ² measured in 2020.
Originality/value
Single-family houses constitute a significant proportion of the building stock. An in-depth analysis of such a building type is necessary to cope with the devastating consequences of climate change. The study developed and scrutinised energy performance improvement scenarios to define the climate change adaptation process' impact and proper procedure. The study is trying to create a strategy to increase the climate resistance capabilities of buildings and fill the gaps in this regard.
The regional climatic comfort index (CCI) deteriorated significantly due to climate change and anthropogenic interference. Knowledge, regarding the long-term temporal dynamics of the CCI in typical regions, should be strengthened. In this study, we analyze the temporal and spatial evolution of CCI from 1969 to 2018 in Guangdong Province, based on a number of meteorological indicators. Additionally, the population exposure to climate unconformity was examined since 1990 with the help of population data. Our study found that: (1) the warming and humidifying of the summer climate served as the main driving force for the continuous deterioration of the CCI, with comfortable days decreased by 1.06 day/10 year and the extremely muggy days increased by 2.83 day/10 year; (2) spatially, the lowest climate comfortability concentrated in southwestern Guangdong with more than 50 uncomfortable days each year, while the climate comfortability in northeastern Guangdong tends to deteriorate with a higher rate, which can reach as high as 6 day/10 year; (3) in summer, the population exposure to uncomfortable climate highly centralized in the Pearl River Delta, Shantou, Jieyang, and the surrounding areas, and both area and population exposure showed increasing trends. Particularly, Shenzhen held the highest growth rate of population exposure with an increased rate of 2.94 million/10 year; (4) although the discomfort distribution and deterioration rate vary across the province, the spatial heterogeneity of comfortability is diminishing in Guangdong Province. This study will provide a scientific reference in areas of regional urban planning, thermal environment improvement, local resident health risk analysis, and key strategy implementation.
This study aimed to assess the impacts of climate change on residential energy consumption in Dhaka city of Bangladesh. The monthly electricity consumption data for the period 2011–2014 and long-term climate variables namely monthly rainfall and temperature records (1961–2010) were used in the study. An ensemble of six global circulation models (GCMs) of coupled model intercomparison project phase 5 (CMIP5) namely, BCCCSM1-1, CanESM2, MIROC5, MIROC-ESM, MIROC-ESM-CHEM, and NorESM1-M under four representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios were used to project future changes in rainfall and temperature. The regression models describing the relationship between historical energy consumption and climate variables were developed to project future changes in energy consumptions. The results revealed that daily energy consumption in Dhaka city increases in the range of 6.46–11.97 and 2.37–6.25 MkWh at 95% level of confidence for every increase of temperature by 1 °C and daily average rainfall by 1 mm, respectively. This study concluded that daily total residential energy demand and peak demand in Dhaka city can increase up to 5.9–15.6 and 5.1–16.7%, respectively, by the end of this century under different climate change scenarios.
Estimating cooling and heating energy requirements is an integral part of designing and managing buildings. Further, as buildings are among the largest energy consumers in cities, the estimates are important for formulating effective energy conservation strategies. Where complex hourly simulation models are not favored, such estimates may be derived by simplified methods that are less computationally intensive but still provide results that are reasonably close to those obtained from the more complicated approach. The equivalent full load hours (EFLH) method is a simplified energy estimation method that has recently gained popularity. It offers a straightforward means of evaluating energy efficiency programs. However, to date, easily accessible EFLH data exist only for a very limited number of countries in North America and Europe, but not Asia. This current work provides previously unavailable monthly EFLH data for building cooling and heating in three large Asian cities, viz. Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo. To assess the effects of changing temperature over the course of decades on building cooling and heating energy consumption, EFLH data are calculated for three time periods: past (1983–2005), present (2006–2014) and future (2015–2044). The projections for the future time period are based on the climate scenarios Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report. RCP-4.5 assumes a stabilization of future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions followed by a reduction, while RCP-8.5 assumes their further increase. From the EFLH data, considering just the effects of ambient temperature changes, it is projected the total energy required to heat and/or cool residential dwellings in Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo to increase by 18.3%, 4% and 10.4%, respectively over 62 years from 1983 to 2044 in the case of RCP-4.5, and by 23.3%, 9.3% and 15.8%, respectively in the case of RCP-8.5. This shows that even with future stabilization and reduction of GHG emissions, as per scenario RCP-4.5, the energy needs of the three cities for building heating and cooling combined can be expected to increase over the next few decades. This has significant implications, namely increased demands for additional primary energy, which will result in further GHG emissions. These effects, however, can be controlled with adjustments to the electricity fuel mix of each location, and also by use of more efficient heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) devices. [Full text available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2016.12.039]
This research investigates projecting and 'morphing' weather files for building energy simulations in order to calculate lifetime energy consumption. Multiple weather-file modification tools and morphing methodologies have been developed over the last couple of decades to account for variable climate patterns. Two tools were used in this work to evaluate potential climate projections and explore differences in uncertainty and assumptions when applied to the same set of prototype buildings. The research uses Boston, Miami and San Francisco as diverse cities representing different climate challenges and to study regional effects on complete long-term energy use in future scenarios. The most recent climate projections from the IPCC and UKCP09 are compared with historic projections to understand how variances in algorithms alter building energy use over time. The comparison of energy simulations using 'morphed' weather files under different methodologies, current climate forecasts and adjusted emissions scenarios are visualized and discussed to demonstrate the impact of climate change on building energy consumption. Some results are to be expected, but Boston's decreasing future energy use intensity (EUI) and variations in rates of change exhibit the importance of considering future climate projections in building energy simulations.
This article quantifies the energy saving potential and robustness of nine energy retrofitting measures, as well as four combinations of these, for residential building stocks of three major cities in Sweden and for five scenarios of future climatic conditions, downscaled by a regional climate model (RCM). The retrofitting measures are evaluated for five temporal resolutions of hourly, daily, monthly, annual and 20-years during the period of 1961 through 2100. The evaluation takes into account a very important uncertainty factor of future climate data, induced by different global climate models (GCMs). The application of a statistical method for assessing the retrofitting measures is being evaluated.
Results verify the consistency and reliability of the comparative assessment and confirm the possibility of assessing the retrofitting measures without the need for long-term simulations and considering climate uncertainties. Among the considered retrofitting measures, a combination of an improved thermal insulation of the building envelope with energy efficient windows is the most effective and robust retrofitting measure, while tuning the indoor set-point temperature to 20 °C can also contribute to significant energy savings.
Turkey’s electricity mix is dominated by fossil fuels, but the country has ambitious future targets for renewable and nuclear energy. At present, environmental impacts of electricity generation in Turkey are unknown so this paper represents a first attempt to fill this knowledge gap. Taking a life cycle approach, the study considers eleven impacts from electricity generation over the period 1990–2014. All 516 power plants currently operational in Turkey are assessed: lignite, hard coal, natural gas, hydro, onshore wind and geothermal. The results show that the annual impacts from electricity have been going up steadily over the period, increasing by 2–9 times, with the global warming potential being higher by a factor of five. This is due to a four-fold increase in electricity demand and a growing share of fossil fuels. The impact trends per unit of electricity generated differ from those for the annual impacts, with only four impacts being higher today than in 1990, including the global warming potential. Most other impacts are lower from 35% to two times. These findings demonstrate the need for diversifying the electricity mix by increasing the share of domestically-abundant renewable resources, such as geothermal, wind, and solar energy.
In a changing outdoor climate, new buildings as well as the existing building stock need to adapt in order to keep providing their inhabitants and users a comfortable and healthy indoor environment, with a minimum or - preferably - no increase in energy consumption. In this paper, the effectiveness of six passive climate change adaptation measures applied at the level of building components is assessed using building energy simulations for three generic residential buildings as commonly built in - among others - the Netherlands: (1) detached house; (2) terraced house; (3) apartment. The study involves both residential buildings that are built according to the regulations and common practice in 2012, and residential buildings that were constructed in the 1970s, with a lower thermal resistance of the opaque and transparent parts of the building envelope. The climate change adaptation measures investigated are: (i) increased thermal resistance; (ii) changed thermal capacity; (iii) increased short-wave reflectivity (albedo); (iv) vegetation roofs; (v) solar shading; and (vi) additional natural ventilation. This paper quantifies the effectiveness of these climate change adaptation measures for new residential buildings as well as for renovation of the current building stock. The performance indicator is the number of overheating hours during a year. It is shown that exterior solar shading and additional natural ventilation are most effective for this performance indicator. Furthermore, increasing thermal insulation to reduce energy use for heating demands additional measures to prevent overheating.
Construction and operation of the built environment is recognized as a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions due to high energy consumption. One of the most critical built environment elements are the external walls. For Turkey, specifically the concrete based external wall systems are of importance. Generally, the concrete based external wall systems are composed of several layers: internal gypsum based plaster, concrete, insulating material, and external plaster. The thermal performance of the wall system not only depends on the type and thickness of the insulating layer, but also on the properties of other system elements. This study focuses on evaluating the use of a typical concrete mix design on the thermal and environmental performance of the wall system. For this purpose, a typical mix design was chosen with a known thermal parameters. Then, a 3D model of the selected wall system was established using Solidworks software. Finite element method based thermal simulation was carried out to calculate the thermal performance of the wall system with the selected concrete mix design. Then, the life-cycle analysis was used to calculate the global warming potential (GWP) for the manufacturing of the wall system. Finally, for a typical concrete based external wall system the effect of the concrete mix design on the GWPs was correlated to the thermal performance of the selected system
This paper presents for the first time the life cycle environmental impacts of electricity generation from fossil fuel power plants in Turkey which supply three quarters of national demand. There are 16 lignite, eight hard coal and 187 gas power plants in Turkey, all of which are considered in the study. The results suggest that electricity generation from gas has the lowest impacts for 10 out of 11 impacts considered. However, its ozone layer depletion is 48 times higher than for lignite and 12 times greater than for hard coal electricity. Lignite is the worst option overall, with eight impacts higher than for hard coal, ranging from 11% higher fossil fuel depletion to six times greater freshwater ecotoxicity. Conversely, its depletion of elements and ozone layer are four times lower than for hard coal; global warming is 6% lower. Most impacts are mainly caused by the operation of power plants and transportation of imported fuels. Annually, electricity generation from fossil fuels emits 109 Mt CO2-eq. and depletes 1660 PJ of primary fossil energy. These and the majority of other impacts are from lignite and hard coal power, despite the gas plants generating almost three and five times more electricity, respectively. Therefore, reducing the share of lignite and hard coal power and expanding the contribution of natural gas would lead to significant reductions of environmental impacts from the electricity sector in Turkey, including greenhouse gas emissions; however, ozone layer depletion would increase substantially.
Long-term variability and trends of the annual numbers of summer and tropical days were investigated by using nonlinear (monotonic) and linear trend detection tests for the period 1950–2010 for 97 meteorological stations of Turkey. The results suggest that the numbers of both summer and tropical days indicate a general increasing tendency in Turkey. For the study period, statistically significant increasing trends for summer (tropical) days are detected at 64 (71) stations, of which 51 (58) of these positive trends are significant at the 0.01 significance level. Two periods of changes in summer and tropical days are identified: in the 1950–1975 sub-period with an episode of slight cooling, the annual number of summer and tropical days decreases, whereas in the sub-period of 1976–2010 with an episode of significant increasing trend, the annual number of summer and tropical days increases. The summer of 2010 was exceptional for the number of summer and tropical days at most of the stations in Turkey. Normalized anomalies of summer (tropical) days at 2010 were larger than three standard deviations with respect to 1961–1990 normal at 27 (43) stations. The largest positive anomalies are observed in the northeastern Anatolia sub-region. This increasing trend has significant impacts on agriculture, energy, tourism and natural ecosystems (e.g., forest fires) in Turkey. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society
This study examines the climatology of annual frost days, and analyses the size and behaviour of the long‐term variability and trends in annual numbers of frost day at the 72 stations over Turkey from 1950 to 2010. The main results are summarized as follows: (1) The annual number of frost days has evidently decreased at most of the stations with some observed regional differences, (2) The decreasing trends are largest over the Eastern Anatolia, the Marmara regions and along the Mediterranean coastline. The meteorological stations located in the continental northeast and the easternmost parts of the Anatolian Peninsula, including Ardahan, Idır and Van, show a negative linear trend with a rate of four days per decade, (3) As in other regions of the Earth, changes in number of frost days are very likely associated with changes in minimum air temperatures and increasing growing season lengths in Turkey, (4) The decreasing trends in number of frost days also indicated considerable decadal‐scale variability. This variability is very likely attributable to the large‐scale atmospheric circulation and atmospheric oscillations such as the Arctic Oscillation (AO) or North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the North Sea‐Caspian Pattern, (5) Consequently, the long‐winter (DJFM) composites of number of frost days were examined for extreme phases of the AO index during the period 1950–2010 in order to assess the influence of atmospheric oscillations on year‐to‐year variability in number of frost days. According to the Cramer's t k test, winter number of frost days tended to increase significantly during the high (positive) index AO phase, while they tended to decrease significantly during the low (negative) index AO phase. These relationships are statistically significant at the 1% level at the majority of stations. Copyright © 2011 Royal Meteorological Society
There is growing consensus that the populations, infrastructure and ecology of cities are at risk from the impacts of climate change. This review collates evidence of effects in four main areas: urban ventilation and cooling, urban drainage and flood risk, water resources, and outdoor spaces (including air quality and biodiversity). It is shown that built areas exert considerable influence over their local climate and environment, and that urban populations are already facing a range of weather-related risks such as heat waves, air pollution episodes and flooding. Although climate change is expected to compound these problems, building designers and spatial planners are responding through improved building design and layout of cities. For example, green roofs and spaces provide multiple benefits for air quality, mitigating excessive heat and enhancing biodiversity. Hard engineering solutions will continue to play a role in adapting to climate change, but so too will improved forecasting and preparedness, along with risk avoidance through planning controls. There is also an over-arching need for higher-resolution weather data for testing future performance of buildings, urban drainage and water supply systems at city scales.
This paper presents the results of a recent research effort involving an actual urban development project for the city of Vienna. The project developers requested scientifically-based information concerning future microclimatic changes in the development area and their potential ramifications for the thermal performance of the projected buildings. To address this inquiry, simulation models were generated to compute the buildings' thermal performance both for the current and projected climatic conditions. Thereby, alternative building designs (specifically, various surface design options) were considered in view of their mitigation effectiveness vis-à-vis climate change projections. The results help providing qualified evaluations of such building design features.
Long-term changes and trends in the series of monthly, seasonal and annual precipitation totals of 97 stations in Turkey were analysed by considering their spatial and temporal characteristics. Secular trends in precipitation series were examined with the Mann–Kendall rank correlation test for the general period 1930–2002, whereas spatial variabilities of, and relationships between, the precipitation series at 86 of these stations were investigated by the principal component analysis (PCA) for the period 1953–2002 when the length of data is at its best for the stations subjected to the PCA. Major findings of the paper can be summarized as follows: (1) First principal component (PC1) generally describes climatology of the precipitation totals in Turkey that is closely governed by the large-scale and/or synoptic scale atmospheric features (i.e. surface and upper air pressure and wind systems). (2) In winter, it is very likely that the greater PC1 loadings over the western and south-western parts of Turkey characterized mainly with the Mediterranean rainfall regimes indicate influence of the large-scale atmospheric circulation and associated weather patterns. However, smaller PC1 loadings over the north-eastern and eastern parts of Turkey are very likely related to the influence of the northerly mid-latitude cyclones, and the northerly and easterly circulations linked with the Eastern Europe and the Siberian originated high pressures on spatial variations of winter precipitation. (3) As for the long-term temporal variability, it was detected that there is an apparent decreasing trend in the winter precipitation totals of Turkey, whereas a general increasing trend is dominant in the precipitation totals of spring, summer and autumn seasons. (4) Observed decreasing trends are the strongest over the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean Transition rainfall regime regions. (5) Strong decreasing trends are also mostly found in winter months of the year, while apparent increasing trends show up at some stations in the months of April, August and October. Copyright © 2008 Royal Meteorological Society
Heat waves have discernible impacts on mortality and morbidity,
infrastructure, agricultural resources, the retail industry, ecosystem
and tourism and consequently affect human societies. A new definition of
socially relevant heat waves is presented and applied to new data sets
of high-quality homogenized daily maximum and minimum summer air
temperature series from 246 stations in the eastern Mediterranean region
(including Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus,
Greece, Israel, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey). Changes in heat wave
number, length and intensity between 1960 and 2006 are quantified. Daily
temperature homogeneity analysis suggest that many instrumental
measurements in the 1960s are warm-biased, correcting for these biases
regionally averaged heat wave trends are up to 8% higher. We find
significant changes across the western Balkans, southwestern and western
Turkey, and along the southern Black Sea coastline. Since the 1960s, the
mean heat wave intensity, heat wave length and heat wave number across
the eastern Mediterranean region have increased by a factor 7.6
±1.3, 7.5 ±1.3 and 6.2 ±1.1, respectively. These
findings suggest that the heat wave increase in this region is higher
than previously reported.
Building Energy Simulation (BES) programmes often use conventional thermal comfort theories to make decisions, whilst recent research in the field of thermal comfort clearly shows that important effects are not incorporated. The conventional theories of thermal comfort were set up based on steady state laboratory experiments. This, however, is not representing the real situation in buildings, especially not when focusing on residential buildings. Therefore, in present analysis, recent reviews and adaptations are considered to extract acceptable temperature ranges and comfort scales. They will be defined in an algorithm, easily implementable in any BES code. The focus is on comfortable temperature levels in the room, more than on the detailed temperature distribution within that room.
The Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East (EMME) are likely to be greatly affected by climate change, associated with increases in the frequency and intensity of droughts and hot weather conditions. Since the region is diverse and extreme climate conditions already common, the impacts will be disproportional. We have analyzed long-term meteorological datasets along with regional climate model projections for the 21st century, based on the intermediate IPCC SRES scenario A1B. This suggests a continual, gradual and relatively strong warming of about 3.5–7°C between the 1961–1990 reference period and the period 2070–2099. Daytime maximum temperatures appear to increase most rapidly in the northern part of the region, i.e. the Balkan Peninsula and Turkey. Hot summer conditions that rarely occurred in the reference period may become the norm by the middle and the end of the 21st century. Projected precipitation changes are quite variable. Annual precipitation is expected to decrease in the southern Europe – Turkey region and the Levant, whereas in the Arabian Gulf area it may increase. In the former region rainfall is actually expected to increase in winter, while decreasing in spring and summer, with a substantial increase of the number of days without rainfall. Anticipated regional impacts of climate change include heat stress, associated with poor air quality in the urban environment, and increasing scarcity of fresh water in the Levant.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10584-012-0418-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Ensuring the effective thermal insulation in regions, where the cooling requirement of building with respect to heating requirement is dominant, is very important from the aspect of energy economy. In this study, the influence of thermal insulation on the building cooling load and the cooling system in case of air-conditioning by an all-air central air-conditioning system was evaluated for a sample building located in Adana, based on the results of three different types of insulation (A, B and C-type buildings) according to the energy efficiency index defined in the Thermal Insulation Regulation used in Turkey. The operating costs of the air-conditioning system were calculated using cooling bin numbers. Life-cycle cost analysis was carried out utilizing the present-worth cost method. Results showed that both the initial and the operating costs of the air-conditioning system were reduced considerably for all three insulation thicknesses. However, the optimum results in view of economic measurements were obtained for a C-type building. The thickness of thermal insulation for the buildings in the southern Turkey should be determined according to the guidelines for a C-type building.
We develop a method, here called ‘morphing’, to produce design weather data for building thermal simulations that accounts for future changes to climate. Morphing combines present-day observed weather data with results from climate models. The procedure yields weather time series that encapsulate the average weather conditions of future climate scenarios, whilst preserving realistic weather sequences. In this sense the method ‘downscales’ coarse resolution climate model predictions to the fine spatial and temporal resolutions required for building thermal simulations. The morphing procedure is illustrated by application to CIBSE design weather years and climate change scenarios for the UK. Heating degree days calculated from the weather series morphed to future climates show a marked reduction compared to present day, by an amount that agrees well with results calculated directly from the climate model. This agreement gives confidence that the morphing technique faithfully transforms the weather sequences.
Practical application: There is overwhelming consensus amongst the scientific community that the Earth's climate is warming. This warming will have implications for building services in the UK that should be considered now. This article describes a method for producing weather data with best current estimates of future climate that can be used to quantify the risk of building overheating.
Social housing sector is very important in Brazil, due to the necessity of expansion and investments being placed through a substantial government program. Residential buildings are expected to last at least 50 years according to Brazilian standards. Many residential projects in the sector already perform medium or poorly in terms of energy efficiency and thermal comfort today, and their designs are not analysed considering climate change. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate the result of analysing the thermal and energy performance of social housing projects considering climate change, and to assess the impact on the operational phase of introducing energy efficiency measures in the sector, and exploring methods of adaptation to climate change. A representative project of the lower income sector housing was used as case study with the evaluation of measures through thermal and energy simulation with current and future weather files for the cities of São Paulo and Salvador. Results were compared using predicted energy consumption and cooling and heating degree-hours as indicators. The results highlighted some differences related to the climate scenarios and indicator analysed, and showed that the incorporation of energy efficiency measures in current social housing projects is of fundamental importance to minimize the effects of climate change in the coming decades.
Overheating in buildings has been identified as an essential cause of several problems ranging from thermal discomfort and productivity reduction to illness and death. Overheating in buildings is expected to increase as global warming continues. The risk of overheating in existing and new buildings can be reduced if policy makers take decisions about adaptation interventions quickly. This paper introduces a methodology for supporting such decisions on a national level. The methodology aims at (i) quantifying the impact of climate change on the overheating risk, (ii) ranking and characterizing the various building types in terms of their overheating risk and sensitivity to climate change, and (iii) assessing the potential of ventilative cooling to mitigate the effects of climate change. In the case study the overheating risk is evaluated in thousands of dwelling cases (i.e., 9216 possible combinations of several design and operation strategies) consistent with the characteristics of the Dutch dwelling stock built between 1964 and 2013. The overheating risk is assessed for four climate scenarios, which represent historical and future scenarios developed by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. Computational analyses are carried out using the detailed building performance simulation program IDA-ICE, assisted by a postprocessing calculation model developed in MATLAB®.
Heat demand may decrease in the future due to changing weather conditions and building renovation policies, possibly impacting the efficiency and profitability of renewable heat production and distribution systems which are commonly proposed in the literature as an adequate measure for building sector emissions mitigation. In this work, the potential evolution of building heat demand in characteristic locations (within heating dominant climates) is assessed for different scenarios by using a sample building as a case study. Three future weather scenarios were created based on a previously developed methodology, along with one building renovation scenario based on market penetration rates of different renovation measures. Heat demand was calculated through a heat demand model previously developed and validated by the authors. To represent the results, heat demand-outdoor temperature function parameters were used.
With the growing concern of global climate change in the future, how building energy use pattern would change in response is of great interest and importance in drafting future building performance regulations and codes. In this paper, the outputs from global climate model (GCM) are integrated to typical meteorological year weather file to downscale and predict local hourly weather data in the context of U.S. climate regions using a “morphing” methodology. The “morphed” future hourly weather data is then used by EnergyPlus to predict future energy use pattern for residential building in the United States.
Case studies in four representative cities in the U.S. show that climate change is to have great impacts on residential and office building energy use during the year of 2040–2069. The change of annual energy use is predicted to range from −1.64% to 14.07% for residential building and from −3.27% to −0.12% for office building under A2 scenario (a carbon emission scenarios defined by IPCC) in different regions. The research results suggest that the climate change will narrow the gap of energy use for residential buildings located in cold and hot climate regions in the U.S. and generally reduce office building energy use in the future. It is also found that the energy use of lightings and fans will slightly decrease in the future. Moreover, the growing peak electricity load during cooling seasons is going to exert greater pressure for the future grid.
Attention to the global warming has influenced many aspects of human activities. Worldwide effort toward energy consumption reduction in building sector is one of the areas affected by climate change. Building regulations demand the building construction industry to be more energy efficient. Studies have been carried out on the thermal performance of energy efficient buildings under future climates, while studies on the durability of energy efficient building envelopes over future climates are limited. This study assesses the impact of future climates on the durability of typical Canadian residential wall assemblies retrofitted to the PassiveHaus over the current, 2020, 2050, and 2080 climatic conditions for Montreal. The durability performance is evaluated in terms of the frost damage risk of bricks and the biodegradation risk of plywood sheathing through simulations using WUFI Pro program. The future weather files are generated based on weather data recorded at the Montreal International Airport weather station using General Circulation Model HadCM3 based on the A2 emission scenario by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This study concludes that upgrading wall assemblies to the PassiveHaus recommended level would increase the frost damage risk of bricks, however, this risk would decrease under 2080 climatic conditions. While the decay risk of the plywood sheathing would decrease, the mould growth risk defined by RHT criteria would increase over future climates. Under future climates, mould growth risks of the plywood defined by the mould growth index exist only when rain leakage is introduced and would likely decrease for the double-stud assembly.
This paper proposes that radiant temperature effects should be counted in energy simulation programs. This can be realized by using the operative temperature as the indoor design condition. Two solution methods are proposed to implement the concept into the ASHRAE heat balance method - one is a direct solution method and the other is the iterative method. The direct solution method saves computational time but requires delicate programming, whereas the iterative method needs minimal modification of any existing program based upon the heat balance method. The significance of the operative temperature control is illustrated by performing five case simulation studies, and it is shown that the method makes a significant difference when relatively large temperature differences exist between the room surfaces and the room air.
Climate change has been shown to significantly alter the heating and cooling needed to maintain thermal comfort within a home. However, limited studies have investigated the impact on the design philosophy associated with achieving an energy efficient building envelope with the onset of climate change. Applying robust future TMY for 2070 the change in heating and cooling demand has been studied in this paper for various combinations of external and internal wall insulation, roof insulation, reflective foil, thermally reflective roofs and different floor coverings. A building thermal model was used for the mild temperate climate of Adelaide, Australia, which requires both heating and cooling, but is dominated by heating. Climate change was found to increase and shift this demand to cooling dominated. It was determined that with climate change, heating becomes significantly less important in better insulated buildings and therefore measures which reduce cooling load are more critical. It is concluded that in this climate zone, climate change design approaches need to dramatically change to focus on cooling, contrary to present strategies.
A significant number of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analyses of renewable energy technologies is available in the literature, even though there is a lack of consistent conclusions about the life cycle impacts of the different technologies. The reported results vary consistently, according to the size and the technology of the considered plant, thus limiting the utility of LCA to inform policy makers and constituting a barrier to the deployment of a full awareness on sustainable energies. This variability in LCA results, in fact, can generate confusion regarding the actual environmental consequences of implementing renewable technologies. The paper reviews approximately 50 papers, related to more than 100 different case studies regarding solar energy (Concentrated Solar Power, Photovoltaic), wind power, hydropower and geothermal power. A methodology for the harmonization of the results is presented. The detailed data collection and the results normalization and harmonization allowed a more reliable comparison of the various renewable technologies. For most of the considered environmental indicators, wind power technologies turn out to be the low end while geothermal and PV technologies the high end of the impact range where all the other technologies are positioned.
Internal summertime temperatures measured in 268 homes in Leicester, UK, are reported. The hourly data were collected from living rooms and bedrooms during the summer of 2009. Some household interviews were conducted. The sample of homes was statistically representative of the socio-technical characteristics of the city's housing stock. The data provide insight into the influence of house construction, energy system usage, and occupant characteristics on the incidence of elevated temperatures and thermal discomfort. The warmest homes were amongst the 13% that were heated. Significantly more of these had occupants aged over 70 years who are particularly vulnerable to high temperatures. The national heatwave plan might usefully caution against summertime heating. Temperatures in the 230 free-running homes were analysed using both static criteria and criteria associated with the BSEN15251 adaptive thermal comfort model. These indicated that flats tended to be significantly warmer than other house types. Solid wall homes and detached houses tended to be significantly cooler. It is argued that adaptive criteria provide a valuable and credible framework for assessing internal temperatures in free-running UK homes. However, the temperatures in the Leicester homes were much lower than anticipated by the BSEN15251 model. Numerous possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.
Il est rendu compte des températures estivales intérieures mesurées dans 268 logements de Leicester, au Royaume-Uni. Les données horaires ont été recueillies dans les salles de séjour et les chambres pendant l'été 2009. Il a été procédé à des entretiens dans un certain nombre de foyers. L'échantillon de logements était statistiquement représentatif des caractéristiques sociotechniques du parc de logements de la ville. Les données fournissent des enseignements sur l'influence qu'exercent la construction des logements, l'utilisation du système d'énergie et les caractéristiques des occupants sur l'incidence des températures élevées et de l'inconfort thermique. Les logements les plus chauds ont été trouvés dans les 13 % qui étaient chauffés. Un nombre sensiblement plus important de ceux-ci avaient des occupants de plus de 70 ans qui sont particulièrement vulnérables aux températures élevées. Le plan national canicule pourrait utilement mettre en garde contre le chauffage en période estivale. Les températures dans les 230 logements permettant une gestion autonome du chauffage ont été analysées en utilisant à la fois des critères statiques et les critères associés au modèle de confort thermique adaptatif BSEN15251. Ceux-ci ont indiqué que les appartements avaient tendance à être nettement plus chauds que les autres types de logements. Les logements à murs pleins et les maisons individuelles avaient tendance à être sensiblement plus frais. Il est fait valoir que les critères adaptatifs fournissent un cadre utile et crédible pour l'évaluation des températures intérieures dans les logements britanniques permettant une gestion autonome du chauffage. Cependant, les températures des logements de Leicester étaient nettement inférieures à celles anticipées par le modèle BSEN15251. Il est discuté des nombreuses raisons pouvant expliquer cette différence.
Mots clés: adaptation, changement climatique, stress thermique, vague de chaleur, logements, surchauffe, été, mesure de la température, confort thermique, R-U
The Summary for Policy Makers of the IPCC Special Report on Managing the
Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change
Adaptation will be approved by the world governments in November 2011.
The focus of the Special Report is on climate change and its role in
altering the frequency, severity, and impact of extreme events or
disasters, and on the costs of both impacts and the actions taken to
prepare for, respond to, and recover from extreme events and disasters.
The emphasis is on understanding the factors that make people and
infrastructure vulnerable to extreme events, on recent and future
changes in the relationship between climate change and extremes, and on
managing the risks of disasters over a wide range of spatial and
temporal scales. The assessment considers a broad suite of adaptations
and explores the limits to adaptation. The assessment was designed to
build durable links and foundations for partnerships between the
stakeholder communities focused on climate change and those focused on
disaster risk reduction. The Special Report begins with material that
frames the issues, followed by an assessment of the reasons that
communities are vulnerable. Two chapters assess the role of past and
future climate change in altering extremes and the impact of these on
the physical environment and human systems. Three chapters assess
available knowledge on impacts and adaptation, with separate chapters
considering the literature, stakeholder relationships, and potential
policy tools relevant to the local, national, and international scales.
Longer-term components of adaptation to weather and climate extremes and
disasters are assessed in the context of moving toward sustainability.
The final chapter provides case studies that integrate themes across
several chapters or are so unique that they need to be considered
separately.
The aim of this study was to reduce energy consumption, especially heating, in buildings. Improvements in the thermal conductivity of wood flooring, which was considered to decrease heating between floors and the indoor areas, were investigated. Wood flooring components such as solid-wood, high-density fiberboard (HDF), adhesives and polyethylene generally exhibit low thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity and transfer performance of 21 replicates of wood flooring materials generally used in Korea were measured. The thermal conductivity was measured by using the guarded hot plate method. The thermal conductivities differed according to the structure of the floorings. Laminate wood flooring exhibited the highest thermal conductivity because of its high density and thin layers compared to the other floorings. The thermal transfer performance differed according to the installation method. The floating installation method exhibited a lower thermal transfer speed than the adhesion installation method because of its air layers and polyethylene form.
With a growing global concern about climate change, the building industry is facing the question of how predicted changes in climate will impact on the performance of buildings around the world. This is resulting in a fast-growing field of research that focuses on the adaptation and resilience of buildings to a changing climate. This review paper sets the scene for a special issue of Building and Environment on this subject. It discusses the relationship between climate change and buildings and the emerging body of knowledge on the subject, as well as classifying and summarizing the contributions to this special issue.
Construction sector is usually accepted as the engine that triggers economic growth due to its strong backward and forward linkages with other sectors. On the other hand, it is also argued that increased construction activity could end up with negative economic, social and environmental impacts. The literature emphasizes the role of public sector, especially the national governments in minimizing the negative impacts of construction activity. The related arguments mostly postulate that public sector is well aware of the environmental challenges caused by construction activity and devoted to the understanding of how to improve the sustainability performance of private developers. Yet the case of Turkey provides significant evidences to question these assumptions. In this respect, this paper elaborates on the negative impacts of increased construction activity in Turkey and argues the role of public sector in intensification of the negative environmental effects through deregulation on urban planning and housing production by public agencies. The findings of the research highlight the importance of sustainable construction and verify the need for mainstreaming of sustainable construction into public policy-making at national and local levels, especially in developing countries, where most, if not all, of the future urban population growth will take place.
This paper presents for the first time a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of electricity generation in Mexico. The electricity mix in Mexico is dominated by fossil fuels, which contribute around 79% to the total primary energy; renewable energies contribute 16.5% (hydropower 13.5%, geothermal 3% and wind 0.02%) and the remaining 4.8% is from nuclear power. The LCA results show that 225 TWh of electricity generate about 129 million tonnes of CO2 eq. per year, of which the majority (87%) is due to the combustion of fossil fuels. The renewables and nuclear contribute only 1.1% to the total CO2 eq. Most of the other LCA impacts are also attributed to the fossil fuel options. The results have been compared with values reported for other countries with similar electricity mix, including Italy, Portugal and the UK, showing good agreement.
In the last 3years in Slovenia we experienced extremely hot summers and demand for cooling the buildings have risen significantly. Since climate change scenarios predict higher temperatures for the whole country and for all seasons, we expect that energy demand for heating would decrease while demand for cooling would increase. An analysis for building with permitted energy demand and for low-energy demand building in two typical urban climates in Slovenia was performed. The transient systems simulation program (TRNSYS) was used for simulation of the indoor conditions and the energy use for heating and cooling. Climate change scenarios were presented in form of “future” Test Reference Years (TRY). The time series of hourly data for all meteorological variables for different scenarios were chosen from actual measurements, using the method of highest likelihood. The climate change scenarios predicted temperature rise (+1°C and +3°C) and solar radiation increase (+3% and +6%). With the selection of these scenarios we covered the spectra of possible predicted climate changes in Slovenia.The results show that energy use for heating would decrease from 16% to 25% (depends on the intensity of warming) in subalpine region, while in Mediterranean region the rate of change would not be significant. In summer time we would need up to six times more energy for cooling in subalpine region and approximately two times more in Mediterranean region. low-energy building proved to be very economical in wintertime while on average higher energy consumption for cooling is expected in those buildings in summertime. In case of significant warmer and more solar energy intensive climate, the good isolated buildings are more efficient than standard buildings. TRY proved not to be efficient for studying extreme conditions like installed power of the cooling system.
The aim of the present article is to investigate Turkey's energy demand and the contribution of domestic energy sources to energy consumption. Turkey, the 17th largest economy in the world, is an emerging country with a buoyant economy challenged by a growing demand for energy. Turkey's energy consumption has grown and will continue to grow along with its economy. Turkey's energy consumption is high, but its domestic primary energy sources are oil and natural gas reserves and their production is low. Total primary energy production met about 27% of the total primary energy demand in 2005. Oil has the biggest share in total primary energy consumption. Lignite has the biggest share in Turkey's primary energy production at 45%. Domestic production should be to be nearly doubled by 2010, mainly in coal (lignite), which, at present, accounts for almost half of the total energy production. The hydropower should also increase two-fold over the same period.
Climate change can significantly impact on the total energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of residential buildings. Therefore, climate adaptation should be properly considered in both building design and operation stages to reduce the impact. This paper identified the potential adaptation pathways for existing and new residential buildings, by enhancing their adaptive capacity to accommodate the impact and maintain total energy consumption and GHG emissions no more than the current level in the period of their service life. The feasibility of adaptations was demonstrated by building energy simulations using both representative existing and new housing in eight climate zones varying from cold, temperate to hot humid in Australia. It was found that, in heating dominated climates, a proper level of adaptive capacity of residential buildings could be achieved simply by improving the energy efficiency of building envelop. However, in cooling dominated regions, it could only be achieved by introducing additional measures, such as the use of high energy efficient (EE) appliances and the adoption of renewable energy. The initial costs to implement the adaptations were assessed, suggesting that it is more cost-effective to accommodate future climate change impacts for existing and new houses by improving building envelop energy efficiency in cooling dominated regions, but installing on-site solar PVs instead in heating and cooling balanced regions.
Impact of climate change on energy use in office buildings in a city within each of the five major architectural climates across China – Harbin (severe cold), Beijing (cold), Shanghai (hot summer and cold winter), Kunming (mild) and Hong Kong (hot summer and warm winter) – was investigated for two emissions scenarios. For low forcing, the estimated increase in cooling energy use was 18.5% in Harbin, 20.4% in Beijing, 11.4% in Shanghai, 24.2% in Kunming and 14.1% in Hong Kong; and the reduction in heating 22.3% in Harbin, 26.6% in Beijing, 55.7% in Shanghai, 13.8% in Kunming and 23.6% in Hong Kong. Space heating is usually provided by oil- or gas-fired boiler plants, whereas space cooling mainly relies on electricity. There would certainly be a shift towards electrical power demand. More energy use in buildings would lead to larger emissions, which in turn would exacerbate climate change and global warming. Energy conservation measures were considered to mitigate the impact of climate change on building energy use. These included building envelope, indoor condition, lighting load density and chiller coefficient of performance. It was found that raising the summer indoor design condition by 1–2 °C could result in significant energy savings and have great mitigation potential.
Previous work by the authors has shown the effect that changing climate and small power/lighting equipment can have on heating and cooling loads of typical existing UK offices, for a 2005 baseline. This follow-on study uses an improved office, with reduced cooling loads, and performs retrofit fabric and HVAC measures to further reduce the energy and CO2 emissions associated. The effect of heat recovery on the proposed “2030 office” is then quantified, showing that such an office can tend towards being “passively heated”. With adaptive comfort also applied, the office CO2 emissions are estimated for various UK locations. The measures suggest CO2 emissions relating to heating, cooling and ventilation (HVAC) can be reduced by 61% for the specific office-type studied. The proposed measures are carried out while allowing for a change in activity between 2005 and 2030. When all factors leading to changes in energy use are accounted for, namely small power, lighting, HVAC and climate change, total CO2 savings of 65% are estimated when compared to the 2005 baseline. In achieving these theoretical savings, the relationship between internal activity and HVAC is studied, and identified as being a crucial area if challenging CO2 emission targets are to be reached.
The sustainability of electricity generation from biomass has been assessed in this work according to the key indicators of price, efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, availability, limitations, land use, water use and social impacts. Biomass produced electricity generally provides favourable price, efficiency, emissions, availability and limitations but often has unfavorably high land and water usage as well as social impacts. The type and growing location of the biomass source are paramount to its sustainability. Hardy crops grown on unused or marginal land and waste products are more sustainable than dedicated energy crops grown on food producing land using high rates of fertilisers.
We present a review of climate change projections over the Mediterranean region based on the most recent and comprehensive ensembles of global and regional climate change simulations completed as part of international collaborative projects. A robust and consistent picture of climate change over the Mediterranean emerges, consisting of a pronounced decrease in precipitation, especially in the warm season, except for the northern Mediterranean areas (e.g. the Alps) in winter. This drying is due to increased anticyclonic circulation that yields increasingly stable conditions and is associated with a northward shift of the Atlantic storm track. A pronounced warming is also projected, maximum in the summer season. Inter-annual variability is projected to mostly increase especially in summer, which, along with the mean warming, would lead to a greater occurrence of extremely high temperature events. The projections by the global and regional model simulations are generally consistent with each other at the broad scale. However, the precipitation change signal produced by the regional models shows substantial orographically-induced fine scale structure absent in the global models. Overall, these change signals are robust across forcing scenarios and future time periods, with the magnitude of the signal increasing with the intensity of the forcing. The intensity and robustness of the climate change signals produced by a range of global and regional climate models suggest that the Mediterranean might be an especially vulnerable region to global change.
Past thermal comfort research has shown differences in the thermal sensation votes given in field and laboratory settings. However, such research tends to compare the votes of different groups of people in different environments rather than comparing the same people in each environment. Therefore, a two-phase study was conducted of the thermal comfort of 30 BRE employees in their home, in their office, and in a climate chamber. In the first phase each subject spent two 3 h sessions in each environment and the temperature was adjusted between sessions within the range 18–26°C. Data loggers were used to record the air and mean radiant temperature, air velocity and relative humidity; subjective ratings of thermal sensation were obtained using questionnaires. The subjects wore the same clothing in each session and were allowed to conduct only sedentary activities. The reported thermal sensation votes were compared with those predicted using ISO 7730. The observed neutral temperatures for each of the three environments differed by up to 2°C and were up to 1°C different to those predicted. This finding has implications for energy use. In the second phase, the subjects were studied in their home and office only. No restrictions were imposed on clothing, previous or current activities, or environmental conditions. The observed thermal sensation votes were very poorly correlated with those predicted and with operative temperature.
IPCC, 2007: summary for policymakers, clim. Chang. 2007 impacts, adapt. Vulnerability. Contrib. of Working gr. II to fourth assess
- M L Parry
- O F Canziani
- J P Palutikof
- P J Van Der Linden
- C E Hanson
M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden, C.E. Hanson, IPCC,
2007: summary for policymakers, clim. Chang. 2007 impacts, adapt. Vulnerability. Contrib. of Working gr. II to fourth assess, Rep. Intergov. Panel Clim.
Chang. (2007) 7e22, https://doi.org/10.2134/jeq2008.0015br.
The Future of Cooling, Opportunities for Energy-Efficient Air Conditioning
IEA, The Future of Cooling, Opportunities for Energy-Efficient Air Conditioning, 2018.