Open AccessImportance of Microscale Climate Simulations in City Scale Overheating Assessments
Author(s) -
Chang Shu,
Abhishek Gaur,
Michal Bartko,
Abdelaziz Laouadi,
Lili Ji,
Michael A. Lacasse,
L Wang
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of physics. conference series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1742-6596
pISSN - 1742-6588
DOI - 10.1088/1742-6596/2069/1/012057
Subject(s) - overheating (electricity) , environmental science , meteorology , microscale chemistry , urban heat island , heat wave , climatology , phoenix , wind speed , atmospheric sciences , horizontal resolution , downscaling , climate change , geography , metropolitan area , precipitation , geology , oceanography , physics , mathematics education , mathematics , archaeology , quantum mechanics
This study demonstrates the importance of high-resolution climate simulations when conducting city-scale outdoor heat wave alert and indoor overheating assessments. This is done by modelling urban climate of the Ottawa and Montreal cities at 1 km and 25 km, typical for regional climate modelling respectively, over the summer of 2018 when an extreme heat event caused around 100 deaths in these cities. It is shown that urban climate characteristics (higher temperatures, lower wind speeds, lower relative humidity in the urban core than surroundings) are better simulated at 1 km than at 25 km spatial resolution. Indoor conditions are simulated for an archetype model of a single detached house using EnergyPlus software for two locations within the cities: a) city center and b) airport location. It is shown that the simulated indoor air temperature in the building is highly correlated with the outdoor air temperature. Furthermore, it is found that the maximum indoor air temperature difference of the city center and the airport can be as high as 8°C in Montreal and 9°C in Ottawa. Such intra-urban differences in overheating in buildings will be ignored if microscale simulations are not performed, highlighting their importance for building overheating assessments in cities.