Climate data for use in building design – Past and Future weather files for overheating risk assessment in Ireland.

Met Éireann recently concluded a project to update climate maps and data to support building design standards and perform risk assessments for overheating of buildings. One of the work packages in this project focused on the production of representative weather files for building energy modelling. These are input files containing 365 days of hourly data from a range of weather variables that have the potential to have an impact on the ambient conditions within a building, such as temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind and pressure. They come in the form of Test Reference Years (TRY), which capture average climatic conditions, and Design Summer Years (DSY), which represent hot summer with overheating events. These were produced at six Irish locations.

Established methodologies were followed for the calculation of past weather files based on hourly observations at synoptic weather stations/airports, with a TRY and 3 DSYs selected at each location. A standardised set of Irish climate projections produced by the TRANSLATE project was used to generate future weather files for a range of future climate scenarios. It is a multi-model ensemble comprising of EURO-CORDEX simulations and higher resolution regional projections produced by the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC). TRANSLATE contains 27 different climate scenarios, formed from 3 different time periods, 3 emission scenarios and 3 model sensitivities. The “delta-change” methodology was employed to produce the files at the required hourly resolution, with a TRY and 3 DSYs produced for each future climate scenario.

These data will enable Irish building designers to make more informed decisions regarding the risk of overheating, both for current conditions and the potential changes that will occur due to the warming climate.