Energy consumption in buildings is heavily affected by climate change. It causes significant variations of
the outdoor design conditions, cooling and heating loads. In this paper, a total of 40 years (1967–2006)
of hourly temperature data were considered in four decades and outdoor design conditions for each
decade were calculated. It was found that wet-bulb temperature (WBT) has increased by 3.28 ◦
C during 9340
the mentioned period, which impacts on design and selection of the cooling equipment. The results
show that cooling hours is projected to increase around 15% over the whole 1967–2006 period. The
most important result found in this study is the inability of direct evaporative cooling (DEC) systems in
preparing comfort condition after 1997, whereas these systems provided thermal comfort in Tehran’s
buildings from1967 to 1996. The prediction of climate change impacts on the outdoor design conditions
and cooling systems performance until 2020 demonstrates dry bulb temperature (DBT) andWBT increase
1.05 ◦
C and 2.42 ◦
C respectively. Hence, indirect–direct evaporative cooling systems (IDEC) may not be
responsible for the years after 2016. Besides, the additional energy for absorption and vapor compression
(VC) cooling systems will grow quickly in the future.1. Introduction
Climate change, impacting on buildings’ energy consumption,
is strongly affected by population growth, buildings and indus-
tries development. Nowadays, weather condition variations have
become one of the main problems of the world. The researchers
show that the surface temperature will grow approximately
1.4–5.8 ◦C [1,2].
The study done by Luterbach et al. [3] on European seasonal and
annual temperature variations shows the coldest European win-
ter in 1708 and the hottest summer in 2003 have occurred. As a
result of climatic change, air humidity in cold seasons, cooling load,
and uncomforted conditions in buildings have been increased. For
instance,moisture content in winter will increase by 15% by 2020s
and by up to 25% by 2050s. In London, cooling degree-days have
increased over 1976–1995 of 20% and by 2005s around 60%. These
values will grow almost 200% until 2080 [4,5].
Climate change not only has afforded DBT increase in recent
years but also has increased moisture content of air. Greenhouse
effect is therefore, intensified and also, due to increase of out-
door dry bulb and wet-bulb temperatures, building sensible and
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 21 88255942; fax: +98 21 88255941.
E-mail address: delfani@bhrc.ac.ir (S. Delfani).
latent heat gains in hot seasons are increased, thus building cool-
ing load becomes more. By rising humidity content of outdoor air,
larger HVAC equipments are required for dehumidification of air to
achieve comfort conditions.
Many investigations have been carried out for considering the
effect of climatic change on energy consumption. Issac and Van
Vuuren [6] studied the influence of cooling degree-day changes on
HVAC systems’ energy use and predicted energy demand in the
future. Evaluating this influence based on the cooling and heating
degree-days have been also done bymany researchers. All the case
studies indicate a dramatic reduction of heating and increase of
cooling energy demand.On the regional scale, Sailor [7] and Rong et
al. [8] estimated demand of cooling and heating energy of US build-
ings in relation to the present climate and future climate change
for the USA. The results of Aebischer et al. [9] study also reveals
that at least by 2035 increases in cooling energy demand due to
global warming are likely to be outweighed by a reduction in the
need for heating energy. The investigations into climate change in 能源和建筑英文文献和中文翻译:http://www.751com.cn/fanyi/lunwen_8028.html