Generating future extreme weather scenarios for urban impact simulations

Climate change, including the increasing number and intensity of extreme weather events, is putting significant pressure on the built environment, demanding climate-resilient design approaches. Building simulations rely on weather files to provide meteorological input, with Typical Meteorological Years (TMYs) being widely used due to their simplicity and widespread availability. However, TMYs represent average historic weather and are therefore not designed to investigate the impact of future climate and extremes. Moreover, available weather files usually overlook local effects like topography and urban heat islands.

This study proposes a solution to the previously outlined limitations by introducing a user-friendly approach to generating future extreme weather files. It selects CMIP6 climate projections for defined warming scenarios, which are combined with ERA5-Land data to identify past analogues for future conditions, creating ensembles of future hourly meteorological data. These ensembles are transformed into extreme weather files tailored to the design criteria (e.g. heat wave with specific return period) and refined by an urban microclimate model for local conditions. The proposed method offers key advantages, including the ability to address various types of future extreme hazards, the adaptability to any location, and the incorporation of urban microclimate effects. This enables robust decision making for climate-resilient urban planning.