Modelling of the heat and the cold risks in Sofia and Varna – preliminary results

Abstract

According to future climate projections, the expected thermal stress environmental conditions will get worse if the authorities do not apply appropriate measures for mitigation and adaptation to these changes. The health issues concerning air pollution and extreme temperatures have assumed great importance in recent years. The objective of this study is to estimate the thermal comfort in two of the biggest cities in Bulgaria - Sofia and Varna and their surroundings for the year 2017 by biometeorological indexes. We use computer simulations of the atmospheric parameters that define the thermal comfort indexes, by Advanced Research Weather Forecast Model WRF ARW version 3.9. We performed the simulations on four domains for 2017 with an output frequency of 1 hour. The outermost domain has a horizontal resolution of 9 km and encompasses the Balkan Peninsula. It uses initial and boundary conditions from the 0.25-degree NCEP Final Operational Model Global Tropospheric Analyses datasets with a time-frequency of 6 hours. The estimation of the thermal comfort conditions is performed with characteristics called indexes. The differences in the number of cases between the indexes are due to the specific definitions and the meteorological factors that each of them takes into account. Some of these characteristics have applications depending on the specific thermal conditions.