climate change

According to researchers, climate change is inevitable in the 21st century. As far as Greece is concerned, this climate change will be related to an increase in ambient surface temperature and to a decrease in annual precipitation. On the other hand wind patterns will not change significantly. Also, no significant changes are expected for global solar radiation. Regional climate models related to Greece show low uncertainties. The climate of Greece is typical Mediterranean with wet, cool winters and hot, dry summers.

The Low Income Group (L.I.G) in Lagos, Nigeria represents about 70% of the 18million population of the state. They are an important part of the economic activities in the state, with the bulk of public transportation and informal trading being undertaken by these groups. Housing, as the second most important human need after food has a profound influence on the health, efficiency, social behaviour, satisfaction and general welfare of the community.

The synergistic effects between summertime ventilation behaviour, indoor temperature and air pollutant concentration in relation to energy retrofit and climate change have been under-investigated to date. This paper explores such interactions in a social housing setting. The case study flat is located on a mid-floor of a high-rise council tower block in central London. Dwellings of this type are likely to be occupied by vulnerable individuals (elderly people or people suffering from ill health or mobility impairment).

Climate change is now recognized as a prime challenge of the 21st century. It is increasingly clear that there is a need to take action in order to adapt specific buildings to changing circumstances, in a cost-effective way. This paper presents the results of the first step of an EPSRC-funded research project that aims to manage the thermal risks in buildings subject to climate change, employing building simulation (coupled with uncertainty analysis) to quantify these risks, their consequences, and risk abatement options. 

While the scientific literature is full of studies looking at the impact of climate change driven by human activity, there is very little research on the impact of climate change or urban heat island on building operation and performance across the world. For this study, typical and extreme meteorological weather data were created for 25 locations (20 climate regions) to represent a range of predicted climate change and heat island scenarios for building simulation. Then a set of prototypical buildings were created to represent typical, good, and low-energy practices around the world.

Over the past 15 years, much scientific work has been published on the potential human impacts on climates. For the Third Assessment Report published by the United Nations International Program on Climate Change in 2001, a series of economic development scenarios were created and four major general circulation models (GCM) were used to estimate the anthropogenesis-forced climate change. These GCMs produce worldwide grids of predicted monthly temperature, cloud, and precipitation deviations from the period of 1961-1990.

There is a growing consensus that the climate is changing faster than at any time in the past millennium. This is likely to have major effects upon many aspects of the built environment. UK Climate Impact Projections 09 indicate significant increases in Summer Mean Temperatures. This may suggest a requirement for cooler buildings during the summer months. In consequence, that would likely lead to an increase in demand for mechanical ventilation and comfort cooling.

Climate change phenomena such as global warming and urban heat island effects cause serious problems for the development of building technology. Therefore, it is imperative that architects and designers consider the effects of climate change on long-term building performance. At present, energy simulations are often used to evaluate the indoor thermal environment and energy consumption of buildings. In these simulations, it is common to use regional weather data that are usually based on current or past weather conditions.

Future climate change might have a tremendous impact on energy use, ventilative cooling strategies and thermal comfort in buildings, since these parameters are strongly correlated with the external weather conditions.
This paper will present results of a study of the impact future climate change scenarios as developed by the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) and implemented in weather files for specific future time slices (2020, 2050 and 2080) on the design of the external envelope of a hotel building in Greece. Three climatic regions of Greece are considered.

Public residential buildings in Singapore are designed as naturally ventilated. As climate changes, the indoor thermal comfort becomes critical as it depends greatly on the outdoor weather condition. The Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) model developed for Singapore (Givoni, et al., 2006) which depends on indoor air temperature and air speed is used to predict the indoor thermal comfort.