Sensitivity of building cooling loads to future weather predictions

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The interaction and the relationship between global warming and thermal performance buildings are dynamic in nature. In order to model and understand this behaviour, different approaches, including that of keeping the weather variable unchanged, the morphing approach and the diurnal modelling method, have been used to project and generate future weather data. Among these approaches, various assumptions of change in solar radiation, air humidity and/or wind characteristics may be adopted. In this article, an example is presented to illustrate the generation of future weather data for the different global warming scenarios in Australia. The sensitivity of building cooling loads to possible changes in assumed values used in future weather data generation is investigated. It is shown that, with a ±10% change in proposed future values of solar radiation, air humidity or wind characteristics, the corresponding change in the cooling load of the modeled sample office building at different Australian capital cities would not exceed 6, 4 and 1.5% respectively. It is also found that with ±10% changes in the proposed weather variables of the 2070-High future scenario and of the current weather scenario, the corresponding change in the cooling loads at different locations may be weaker (up to 2% difference in Hobart for ±10% change in global solar radiation), similar (less than 0.6% difference in Hobart for ±10% change in wind speed) or stronger (up to 1.6% difference in Hobart for ±10% change in relative humidity) in the 2070-High future scenario than it is in the current weather scenario.