Building enclosure performance in a more severe climate

Energy and environmental assessment of high-performance building envelope in cold climate

Evaluating the joint effects of climate and land use change on runoff and pollutant loading in a rapidly developing watershed

In this paper, three different plasters are investigated in order to study their effect on whole building envelope energy performance. As the studied plaster contain various amount of super absorbent polymers, they are primarily intended to control relative humidity levels in both building envelopes and interior environments. However, influencing moisture levels in the envelopes will have certain impact on energy performance as well. In order to investigate that effect, the material parameters of all studied plasters were determined and then, series of computational simulations was carried out. The results showed, that even a thin layer of interior plaster may have significant impact on overall building envelope performance. The studied plaster contributed to the reduction of energy consumption from 4 to 6 %.In this paper, three different plasters are investigated in order to study their effect on whole building envelope energy performance. As the studied plaster contain various amount of super absorbent polymers, they are primarily intended to control relative humidity levels in both building envelopes and interior environments. However, influencing moisture levels in the envelopes will have certain impact on energy performance as well. In order to investigate that effect, the material parameters of all studied plasters were determined and then, series of computational simulations was carried out. The results showed, that even a thin layer of interior plaster may have significant impact on overall building envelope performance. The studied plaster contributed to the reduction of energy consumption from 4 to 6 %.

Over the last decades a progressive change in world-wide climatic conditions has been observed and described by the scientific community. Associated to these ongoing changes, reports on the devastating effects of floods and prolonged periods of droughts are increasingly brought to the attention of the public opinion. Also, for considerable parts of the Chilean territory, important changes in climatic conditions have been projected for the decades to come. This situation has encouraged society to take measures in order to attempt to control such changes, as well as to adapt to those changes that cannot eagerly be prevented through world-wide mitigation actions. From a water resources management perspective, the implementation of specific measures at the level of the river basin asks for the availability of tools that allow managers to take decisions in an informed way. Considering that the Biobo Basin (24.371 km2) is of high strategic importance for Chilean development, advances in the general understanding and capacity to describe and predict, in a spatially explicit way, the impact of climate and climate change on (sub-)basin hydrology is urgently needed. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was chosen to model the hydrology of two sub-basins of the Biobo, the Vergara Basin (4.265 km2), located in the south-eastern part of Biobo, and the Lonquimay Basin (455 km2), located within the Andean Mountain Range. First, the model was calibrated and validated for both sub-basins, and then, the response of basin hydrology to different plausible climate change scenarios was modelled. Even when results indicate a wide array of potential impacts in terms of the magnitude of a future reduction of monthly mean discharges, such reductions appear to be highly plausible as future conditions of river discharge. In the event of such reductions, important adaptation measures will be required.

This chapter presents a study of the energy-efficient building envelope design for future climate change. The extremes of climate change are the challenge to the building element and building envelope to better the thermal performance. It was initiated in building design that various external envelope energy-efficient strategies can be implemented depending on the climatic zones. As the climatic zone changes, human body react it as per the change. Same way building envelops need to customize thermal comfort according to climate change. The concept of natural ability of thermoregulation to maintain human body temperature can be similarly applied to energy-efficient building envelope design. Different strategies need study and implement on building envelop design rather than placing high-value insulation material on the exterior of the building to improve energy efficiency and thermal comfort. Climate change was majorly inclined towards the increase and shifts this demand to cooling conquered. In better-insulated buildings to reduce cooling load are more critical. The aim is to identify optimal refurbishment strategies for energy-efficient building envelope design like the concept of thermoregulation of the human body. It was concluding that external envelope energy-efficient strategies are limited and can be implemented to different climatic zones.

Anthropogenic climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions caused global surface temperature in 2011-2020 to be 1.1 °C above pre-industrial levels. By 2100, this increase is predicted to be between 1.4 °C and 4.4 °C under low (SSP1-1.9) and high (SSP5-85) emission scenarios respectively. In response to this and the need to reduce energy usage and fuel poverty levels, buildings are being retrofitted for energy efficiency. UK retrofit guidance considers building thermal performance in the context of steady-state heat transfer through the building envelope. This simplification describes heat flow when external and internal environmental temperatures are constant in time, which greatly reduces computational complexity. However, the steady-state approach neglects the thermal inertia of the building envelope, i.e., its ability to store and delay transmission of thermal energy. This can result in significantly inaccurate calculations of indoor temperatures and the energy required for space conditioning. It is currently unknown how climate change affects the problematicality of using steady-state analysis for walls of different thermal properties. This research investigates this problem through a novel analysis of the dynamic nature of the interaction between a building and its environment. Air temperatures obtained from historical data and SSP5-85 projections are used to calculate sol-air temperatures at 100 km2 resolution for 1951-1980, 2011-2040 and 2071-2100. The deviation from steady-state heat transfer is characterised through analysis of the temperature field inside the building wall when excited by the air and sol-air temperatures. The dynamic nature of the heat transfer is examined for different building envelopes and environments across the three time periods. This information indicates when, or if, it is problematic to use steady-state thermal analysis in retrofit decision-making for buildings of a given location, orientation and envelope construction.

Review on thermal performance of phase change energy storage building envelope

In the Internet of Things(IoT) monitoring system, there are various devices for monitoring the target's movement trajectory and behavior, the raw data of these devices has accumulated over time to form huge historical data. A historical review of monitoring targets requires a system that presents the target's historical data in a visual form. The existing system has realized the storage of target historical data, but there is still a lack in the playback of historical data. The system lacks the visual playback of the target multi-device historical monitoring data, that is difficult to comprehensively reflect the behavior information and movement status of the target during the playback period. The system lacks dynamic presentation of the target's historical motion trajectory, that is difficult to visually display the target's historical position at different times during playback, and it is impossible to analyze the historical behavior trend of the target. This paper designs and implements a historical data playback system that supports the display of target multi-dimensional information and the dynamic presentation of target track to solve the above problems. A lightweight web application framework Express is used to build a website. Based on GIS(Geographic Information System) technology, an incremental update method for fast and dynamic rendering of the target track is proposed. Combined with the component technology, the target history multidimensional information visualization is presented. Test results show that the system can complete multi-dimensional playback of historical IoT monitoring data and rapid dynamic presentation of target tracks.

Current efforts to improve building envelopes mostly focus on reducing energy demand by static measures such as insulation, selective glazing and shading. The resulting envelopes are limited in adapting to weather conditions or occupants’ needs and leave vast potentials for energy savings, onsite energy generation and improvement of occupant comfort untapped. In this work, we report on a dynamic building envelope that utilizes lightweight modules based on a hybrid hard/soft-material actuator to actively modulate solar radiation for local energy generation, passive heating, shading and daylight penetration. We describe two envelope prototypes and demonstrate autonomous solar tracking in real weather conditions. The dynamic photovoltaic envelope achieves an increase of up to 50% in electricity gains as compared to a static photovoltaic envelope. We assess energy savings potentials for three locations, six construction periods and two building use types. The envelope is most effective in temperate and arid climates, in which, for the cases analyzed, it can provide up to 115% of the net energy demand of an office room. Improvements in building envelope performance and onsite power generation are key to enabling zero-energy buildings. Here, Svetozarevic et al. present an adaptive solar facade driven by soft robotic solar trackers that allow both the modulation of daylight penetration and energy generation.

<p><span>The educational web portal </span><span>www.klimafolgenonline-bildung.de</span><span> is a tailor-made climate service to make climate and climate impact data and scientific knowledge of climate impacts and adaptation applicable for secondary and vocational schools in Germany. Climate science fundamentals and worksheets combining the interactive experience exploring climate data in the web portal with other sources have been designed for the school context to enable teachers to educate the complex relationships of climate change and its impacts [1]. In addition, as an easy-to-use compendium for the multitude and heterogeneous teaching materials, we have set up the separate web site </span><span>www.klimabildung-pik.de</span><span>. This site includes as well handouts, explanations and a tutorial. Here, we follow a competence-oriented approach, directed at everyday experience and the direct regional reference of students, enabling them to come to reasoned decisions.</span></p><p><span>To test and improve the developed learning lessons, to make them more self-explanatory and to tailor them for disciplinary school lessons, we performed more than 40 workshops and surveys with teachers. In secondary schools, nearly for all subjects we found entrance points for climate change learning units. In vocational schools, we developed learning units for economics, social studies, politics, healthcare management and insurance brokerage.</span></p><p><span>During the development process, we identified a number of challenges related to climate education with an interactive web portal approach (see as well [1]): the requirement to break down the scientific information when using a web portal, the usability of scientific visualizations for non-expert users, the communication of uncertainties and the integration of interactive web portals in school lessons in general. A specific observation is that in some cases the gap between the media skills of teachers and students can be a problem while interactively orienting in a complex space of climate scenarios, sectors and parameters. The additional time requirements for teachers integrating new interactive material into a rigid school curriculum and the level of attention span of some students can be further obstacles using the provided teaching material. For vocational schools, we observed much less hurdles and a higher motivation of students even without teacher support. </span></p><p><span>For future work, we plan to integrate the teaching material into our new international portal version (currently available at kfo.pik-potsdam.de), providing teaching material tailored to climate impact information as well outside of Germany and for teachers and students in other world regions.</span></p><p><span>[1] Blumenthal, I., Schlenther, C., Hirsbrunner, S., Stock, M., Nocke, T. (2018): Climate Impacts for German Schools - An Educational Web Portal Solution. - In: Filho, W. L., Manolas, E., Azul, A. M., Azeiteiro, U. M., McGhie, H. (Eds.), Handbook of Climate Change Communication: Vol. 3 - Case Studies in Climate Change Communication, Cham : Springer, 209-223.</span></p>

Climate change impacts are increasingly manifested at local scales, where mitigation and adaptation strategies are implemented. Despite the growing wealth of available climate data and services, their effective usage in local climate impact assessment and decision-making processes for mitigation and adaptation planning remains limited due to scale mismatches, computational constraints, complexity, and usability barriers for non-domain experts. Addressing these challenges requires both advanced computational methods and improved access to climate data and analysis tools. The EU Horizon project, FOCAL, bridges the gap between data, services, and their users by implementing an open compute platform that combines intelligent workflow management with high-performance computing (HPC) resources to allow for an efficient exploration of climate data on a local scale. In addition, innovative artificial intelligence (AI) tools are developed and made available to enhance climate data analysis in terms of speed, robustness, pattern detection, and localization; thereby expanding the toolkit of climate data analysis and impact assessment methods. A main objective of FOCAL is to support science-based, actionable decision-making processes in forestry and urban planning through its provided tools. In a co-design process involving developers and potential platform users from two forest pilot regions with contrasting ecological and management contexts (Forest Pilots) as well as a pilot city (Urban Pilot), web applications for intuitive user-platform-interaction and workflows, grounded in state-of-the-art climate science, to address concrete user questions in forestry and urban planning have been specified. As a result, decision makers can efficiently use climate data for the development of climate adaptation strategies.This contribution focuses on the Urban Pilot, implemented for the pilot city Constance (Baden-Württemberg, southern Germany), located at the western end of Lake Constance. Three core workflows have been developed:1) Regional climate change workflow: provision of robust regional climate change information for the past and the future under different global warming levels for urban areas, based on regional climate model and localized climate data, serving multi-sectoral local climate impact assessments;2) Urban hot and cool spot workflow: detection and high-spatial-resolution visual exploration of hot and cool spots in urban environments, supporting exposure assessment by integrating additional data (e.g., population or infrastructure data), risk assessment, and the planning of urban heat resilience measures and cooling spaces;3) Urban blue spot workflow: identification of blue spots (rainfall accumulation hazards) and provision of blue spot data in urban landscapes using processed precipitation data and extreme precipitation scenarios, supporting applications in hydrological modeling, flood risk management, and climate adaptation.By leveraging HPC-based data processing and AI-assisted analysis, these workflows translate complex climate data into actionable, locally relevant information. While demonstrated for the pilot city Constance, the methods and workflows are transferable to other urban areas, contributing to scalable and reproducible climate services.

Impacts of Climate and Land Use Change on Hydrological Response in Gumara Watershed, Ethiopia

Climate change has been occurring at a rapid rate and is being exacerbated by anthropogenic activities that increase global temperatures and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases such as CO2. This greatly impacts ecosystems worldwide, resulting in more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as heat waves and drought. Understanding how ecosystems respond to elevated CO2 is critical for predicting the impacts of climate change on ecosystem processes, such as their ability to sequester carbon. Temperate ecosystems, in particular, are important in mitigating climate change, holding around 20% of the global plant biomass and approximately 10% of the global terrestrial carbon (Bonan, 2008). However, the capacity of these ecosystems to continue sequestering additional carbon dioxide in the future is uncertain when predicted using current terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs). To address this, improved mechanistic representations of ecosystem states and processes under changing climatic conditions are crucial, as well as the initialisation of the models using real-world observations. In this regard, ecosystem-scale experiments, such as Free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments, are extremely useful and powerful tools for improving model predictions and have frequently been used for model-data synthesis and ecosystem analysis (Walker et al, 2015).  In this study, we examined the responses of mature temperate forests to rising atmospheric CO2 and changing climatic conditions using the Ecosystem Demography model (ED2), which is a cohort-based terrestrial biosphere model (TBM). We parameterised the model with data collected from the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research, Free-air CO2 Enrichment (BIFoR FACE) experiment site. As the first study using a TBM at BIFoR, this study analysed the model’s capacity to simulate ecosystem responses to elevated CO2 (+150 ppm above ambient) and extreme weather events such as the European drought of 2022 (Gharun et al, 2024). We ran two simulations and compared model outputs against field measurements of key eco-physiological measurements such as maximum rate of carboxylation, soil moisture, and Net Primary Production (NPP). This study demonstrates the capability and the limitations of the TBM to simulate the responses of a mature temperate forest to elevated CO2 conditions under changing and extreme climatic conditions.  

Key messageExtreme growth reaction analysis shows that larches in the Sudetes are more vulnerable to climate changes, but negative extreme responses will also be observed in the Carpathians in the near future.Pointer year analysis provides information on extreme tree-ring growth reactions, which can significantly improve the interpretation of tree growth response to climate. Similarities and differences in extreme growth responses of larch (Larix decidua Mill.) from the Carpathians and the Sudetes (Polish parts) were studied. To this purpose, a pointer year analysis was performed. Regions with similar extreme growth response patterns to climatic conditions were distinguished. The spatial variability of extreme growth anomalies and the distribution of the determined widespread pointer years and their possible climatic forcing were analyzed. A coincidence of the positive pointer years observed in the Sudetes and lower Carpathians with wet and cold summers (especially during the previous year) was observed. Most of the subregional negative pointer years in the Sudetes are related to droughts whereas in the Carpathians this relation was not observed. Comparison of the extreme growth reaction of larch in both mountain regions suggest that larches in the Sudetes are more vulnerable to climate changes as the negative pointer years observed in the Sudetes are usually associated with droughts that are likely to intensify in the future. Similarities in the drivers of extreme responses of larch in both regions and predicted changes in climatic conditions suggest that negative extreme responses will also be observed in the Carpathians in the near future. The highest parts of the Carpathians (the Tatra Mountains) should be treated separately as both positive and negative pointer years observed there are temperature related. The obtained results suggest that the growth of larch stands in both regions will be negatively affected by predicted climate changes.

Climate change has become a household term in the North and South coastal region of Kenya. The ever increasing temperature conditions and erratic rains have raised concerns among local communities in the region. The changing climatic conditions has affected both man and animal in almost equal measure. Specifically, migration and disappearance of terrestrial animals have been observed. Climate change and biodiversity and specifically terrestrial animals are interrelated. Climate change affects water and pasture which are the lifeblood to terrestrial animals. These animals need water for transport of nutrients and other metabolic processes. They need pasture to acquire nutritional components and for growth and development. Any adverse change on climate therefore affects the animals directly. This paper presents an assessment of the impact of climate change on terrestrial animals. The specific objectives of the paper include: to assess the changing weather and climatic conditions; to document climate change impacts on terrestrial animals, and to explore the strategies put in place by stakeholders to address the problems. The study adopts a descriptive approach including the use of ten local community leaders and conservation agents as key informants to obtain thematic data on terrestrial animals in the selected areas. Four focus group discussions were organized each with ten local community members to give additional information on climate change and terrestrial animals. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and presented graphically in line with the emerging themes. The study generated knowledge and valuable information to global conservation agents, national governments, policy makers and the academia on climate change and biodiversity and specifically terrestrial animals.