Development of the Indian Future Weather File Generator Based on Representative Concentration Pathways

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Sustainability (Switzerland)

Abstract

India’s fossil-fuel-based energy dependency is up to 68%, with the commercial and residential sectors contributing to the rise of building energy demand, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. Several studies have shown that the increasing building energy demand is associated with increased space-cooling ownership and building footprint. The energy demand is predicted to grow further with the conditions of global warming and the phenomenon of urban heat islands. Building designers have been using state-of-the-art transient simulation tools to evaluate energy-efficient envelopes with present-day weather files that are generated with historical weather datasets for any specific location. Designing buildings with historical climatic conditions makes the buildings vulnerable to the predicted climate change impacts. In this paper, a weather file generator was developed to generate Indian future weather files using a geo-filtering-based spatial technique, as well as the temporal downscaling and machine learning (ML)-based bias correction approach proposed by Belcher et al. The future weather files of the three representative concentration pathways of 2.6, 4.5, and 8.5 could be generated for the years 2030, 2050, 2070, 2090, and 2100. Currently, the outputs of the second-generation Canadian Earth System Model are being used to create future weather files that will aid architects, urban designers, and planners in developing a built environment that is resilient to climate change. The novelty lies in using observed historical data from present-day weather files on the typical meteorological year for testing and training ML models. The typical meteorological weather files are composed of the concatenation of the monthly weather datasets from different years, which are referred to for testing and training ML models for bias correction.

DOI

10.3390/su142215191

Publication Date

11-1-2022

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