Climate change and its potential implications for urban environments in the Middle East

• Climate change represents a significant challenge for human settlements and buildings which may fail to perform under the predicted future higher summer temperatures. This is the case in particular for the hot, arid climates of the Middle East where the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects an average summer temperature rise of between 2.5 and 5 °C by the end of the 21st century for an emissions scenario assuming a mix of fossil fuel intensive and non-fossil energy sources. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important to assess the future building performance and the associated cooling loads during the summer months. However, data suitable for this purpose is scarce. This paper presents a tool for transforming existing industry standard weather data for building performance simulation into climate change adapted weather data using climate model outputs generated by the UK Hadley Centre. Weather data generated with this tool is investigated for selected cities in the Middle East with a specific focus on the potential future cooling load requirements.

Nyckelord

Middle East

climate change

weather data

building performance simulation

cooling load

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