Projecting the impact of climate change on design recommendations for residential buildings in Iran

Abstract

The outdoor climate is changing. In order to assure thermal comfort in new and existing residential buildings we need to revise and adapt our building designs. Therefore, 10 meteorological stations in Iran were selected to investigate and predict the influence of climate change on the local climate diversity and variability. In order to provide a comfortable and healthy indoor environment, bioclimatic design recommendations during early design stages were revised, including during the two periods of 1986–2015 and 2020–2050. A modified Givoni's bioclimatic chart was used to visualize the climate variation and to inform designers about accurate and climate-proof bioclimatic design recommendations. The second-generation Canadian Earth System Model was used to predict changes in the maximum and minimum temperature and relative humidity components of future decades. Based on Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6, RCP 4.5, and RCP 8.5 for the greenhouse gas emission section of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the effects of climate change on different cooling and heating strategies were examined. The findings of this study showed that for all the studied stations, apart from Abadan, the trend in temperature increase over the coming decades is not unforeseen. The use of heating strategies will decrease, and the use of cooling strategies will increase. Finally, this study presents an adjusted bioclimatic chart of Iran and quantifies the adaptation measures to climate change to reduce energy use and avoid overheating.