Abstract
This study investigates the effect of anthropogenic heat emissions from air conditioning systems (AC) on air temperature and AC energy consumption in Berlin, Germany. We conduct simulations applying the model system CCLM/DCEP-BEM, a coupled system of the mesoscale climate model COSMO-CLM (CCLM) and the urban Double Canyon Effect Parameterization scheme with a building energy model (DCEP-BEM), for a summer period of 2018. The DCEP-BEM model is designed to explicitly compute the anthropogenic heat emissions from urban buildings and the heat flux transfer between buildings and the atmosphere. We investigate two locations where the AC outdoor units are installed: either on the wall of a building (VerAC) or on the rooftop of a building (HorAC). AC waste heat emissions considerably increase the near-surface air temperature. Compared to a reference scenario without AC systems, the VerAC scenario with a target indoor temperature of 22 results in a temperature increase of up to . The increase is more pronounced during the night and for urban areas. The effect of HorAC on air temperature is overall smaller than in VerAC. With the target indoor temperature of 22 , an urban site’s daily average AC energy consumption per floor area of a room is , which is 35% more than that of a suburban site. This energy-saving results from the urban heat island effect and different building parameters between both sits. The maximum AC energy consumption occurs in the afternoon. When the target indoor temperature rises, the AC energy consumption decreases at a rate of about 16% per 2 change in indoor temperature. The nighttime near-surface temperature in VerAC scenarios shows a declining trend ( per 2 change) with increasing target indoor temperature. This feature is not obvious in HorAC scenarios which further confirms that HorAC has a smaller impact on near-surface air temperature.
Highlights
The United Nations anticipate that 68% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050, compared to today’s statistics of 55% [1]
This study focuses on analyzing the interactions between anthropogenic heat emissions from the air conditioning systems (AC) systems and the outdoor thermal environment in Berlin (Germany) during a dry and hot summer period for different scenarios
In the following we only present the implementation of AC systems into Double-Canyon Effect Parametrization scheme (DCEP)-building energy model (BEM)
Summary
The United Nations anticipate that 68% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050, compared to today’s statistics of 55% [1]. Projections show that the expansion of urban areas and urban activities will increase the indoor energy consumption, and increase urban air pollution and climate emissions [2]. These changes have an immediate impact on urban residents’ health and well-being. Previous studies report that heat waves and the subsequently increased concentration of air pollutants are a major threat to human health in metropolitan areas [3,4,5,6]. The anthropogenic heat emissions from residential and commercial buildings contribute to the urban heat island. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 4645; doi:10.3390/ijerph17134645 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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