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Future Weather Files to Support Climate Resilient Building Design in Vancouver

University of British Columbia. Department of Civil Engineering; University of British Columbia. Campus and Community Planning

Since local weather and climate greatly affect the construction and performance of buildings, reliable meteorological data is essential when simulating building performance. It is well understood that climate change will affect future weather and there is a growing interest in generating future weather files to support climate resilient building design. Weather files that account for climate change have not been widely used for the lower mainland region of British Columbia. In this study, hourly weather files for future climate conditions in Vancouver are created for three time periods using a “morphing” methodology. Morphing uses results from global climate models to adjust observed weather data at a specific location. In this study, daily data from climate simulations for the RCP8.5 emission scenario have been used. The weather variables that have been adjusted are dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, cloud cover, wind speed and atmospheric pressure. The impact of climate change on the energy performance of a multi-unit residential building located on the University of BC campus is analyzed using the energy modelling software EnergyPlus. The simulation results indicate that the changing climate in Vancouver, following RCP8.5, would have a considerable effect on building energy performance and energy demand due to decrease in space heating and increase in cooling requirements. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

Report

eng

2018-11-22

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/67853

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/