Climate change-modified simulation weather files

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Dear all,

I am looking for good sources for simulation weather files that reflect future climate change scenarios, or of tools that can be used to modify TMY files to reflect these scenarios.

Thanks a lot in advance for your suggestions.

Best,

Hazem

==========================
Hazem Rashed-Ali, Ph.D., LEED AP
Associate Professor, Department of Architecture
The University of Texas at San Antonio
Past President, Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC)
Phone: 210-458-3088
Fax: 210-458-3091

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Hazem,

A colleague and I have been developing Future Year weather files for the past four years
using a hybrid method that does frequency analysis of future year weather time series out
to 2100 from dozens of Regional Climate Models,? and combines that with historical weather
data to produce future year weather files for any location for which there are historical
data.? Such a method differs from the "morphing" technique that has been more commonly
used whereby the monthly averages and daily range from a historical weather file are
adjusted according to what the models say. To summarize the difference between the two
methods, "morphing" assumes the climate patterns don't change but just get shifted, while
the hybrid method tries to replicate the future climate patterns and downscale them to a
specific location using the historical data.

So far, we've generated future year weather files for over 120 locations around the world
(see attached list), and have plans to increase that to 200 locations before uploading
them to the White Box Technologies web site to complement the? 5,000+? "typical year" and
160,000+ historical year weather files that are already there.? Furthermore, since our
procedure has been largely automated, future year weather files could be generated within
a day or two for any place with over 5 years of historical data,? or roughly 10,000 other
locations.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me via e-mail or post it on BLDG-SIM if
you think it's of general interest.

Joe

Joe Huang
White Box Technologies, Inc.
346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 205A
Moraga CA 94556
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
http://weather.whiteboxtechnologies.com for simulation-ready weather data
(o) (925)388-0265
(c) (510)928-2683
"building energy simulations at your fingertips"

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Dear Joe,

thanks for letting us know about these future weather files. They might be
really helpful. Do you have a reference for the methodology you used to
generate these scenarios?

In addition, do you or does anyone from this list know about work that has
been done on collecting different regulations that require the use of such
weather files to "future-proof" building design (code compliance)?

Best wishes

Matthias Haase
Professor for Building systems at Institute for Facility Management - ZHAW
Zurich University of Applied Sciences
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You can also purchase future weather files from WeatherShift - they provide them based on two RCP scenarios, and several warming scenarios, giving you a ways to bookend the range of possible future weather scenarios: https://www.weathershift.com/

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For those based in the UK, there also are the files produced by the colleagues at Exeter during the Prometheus project.
These are available from: https://emps.exeter.ac.uk/engineering/research/cee/research/prometheus/downloads/

Kind regards,
Pieter

Prof. Dr. Ir. P.J.C.J de Wilde, CEng FIBPSA FCIBSE MASHRAE FHEA VDI

Professor of Building Performance Analysis

University of Plymouth

Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, United Kingdom

Roland Levinsky Building Room 301A

Email: pieter.dewilde at plymouth.ac.uk

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Matthias,? anybody else interested,

I've received numerous e-mails also asking for a reference on the methodology, so I
thought I'd reply publicly to your question, in case there are other Bldg-Sim readers with
the same question.

I do not take credit at all for using frequency analysis to generate synthetic weather
data, although I've known of the technique since my first days at LBNL (1981) listening to
a colleague trying to do just that.? The credit for using frequency analysis to create
future year weather files should go to my colleague Parag Rastogi, who developed this
method as a major part of his Ph.D. thesis (2016) at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne
(just two hours down the road from where you are :-)).

When I first learned of Parag's work, it seemed an ideal solution to generating future
year hourly files, since we can all agree that the literal 80 year time series from the
climate models are irrelevant; it's just the general patterns that's of interest. I know
that multiple US national laboratories and academic consortia are doing dynamic and
statistical downscaling of climate model results, and good for them, but those are
multi-year efforts done with supercomputers.? On the other hand, "morphing" ignores any
change in the patterns (frequency distribution to be more scientific :-)) and assumes that
the patterns just shift.

Since Parag has given his blessing to me mentioning our collaboration, following is what
Parag wrote as to references:

----

Hi Joe,

?Yes absolutely, feel free to discuss our work together so far and the origins of the
method. I've updated the GitHub page for the repository that contains the original code to
include the relevant references ? https://github.com/paragrastogi/SyntheticWeather/
- also pasted
below as a list.

1. P. Rastogi and M. Andersen, ?Incorporating Climate Change Predictions in the Analysis
of Weather-Based Uncertainty?, presented at the ASHRAE and IBPSA-USA Building
Performance Modeling Conference, Salt Lake City, UT, USA, Aug. 2016, [Online].
Available: http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/208743
.
2. P. Rastogi and M. Andersen, ?Embedding Stochasticity in Building Simulation Through
Synthetic Weather Files?, presented at the 14th International Conference of the
International Building Performance Simulation Association, Hyderabad, India, Dec.
2015, [Online]. Available: http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/208743
.
3. P. Rastogi, ?On the sensitivity of buildings to climate: the interaction of weather
and building envelopes in determining future building energy consumption?, PhD, Ecole
polytechnique f?d?rale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2016. Available:
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/220971?ln=en
. DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.5075/epfl-thesis-6881
. (*Chapter 3*).

------

Joe Huang
White Box Technologies, Inc.
346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 205A
Moraga CA 94556
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
http://weather.whiteboxtechnologies.com for simulation-ready weather data
(o) (925)388-0265
(c) (510)928-2683
"building energy simulations at your fingertips"

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