weather data

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.

A new set of climatic data for different kinds of calculations has been compiled for various Swiss localities. This includes the generation of new design reference year data sets with hourly values for e.g. building simulations. The procedure conforms to a set of new European standards describing the algorithms. One key element in this is the processing of solar radiation information, especially for the separation into direct and diffuse components. The most advanced methodology was used.

Weather data in formats required for annual energy simulations are not available at all locations where building designs are being evaluated. Synthetically generated weather data for these sites could be a viable option. This paper reports on the differences in weather and energy prediction results when using synthetically generated data vs. the use of recorded weather data for 50 cities worldwide.

Two models, the Eggenberger- Polya and the William's logarithmic series have been used to predict the probability of occurrence of varying length mild and hot spells, respectively, for the summer period using a 13-yr hourly database from Athens. Greece. The proposed models provide the necessary information to energy analysis and climatologists contributing towards a more precise analysis of the summer comfort conditions.