Rebecca Maloney
Americas Press Office ,Boston
New tool generates future weather data for 50 cities to simulate future building and urban performance.
In partnership with Argos Analytics, LLC, Arup has developed the WeatherShift™ application, a tool that generates future climate weather data for 50 cities for simulating building and urban performance based on climate simulations run for the recent IPCC Fifth Assessment.
Energy use, water stress, and the comfort conditions of buildings and their urban environments throughout the world will be impacted as the average global temperature increases due to climate change, resulting in significant shifts in weather patterns. With the WeatherShift™ application, cities and building owners in these 50 cities will be able, for the first time, to quantitatively assess the impact of climate change on their place making. Additionally, designers will be able to further develop strategies through which buildings can be readied to respond to impacts and maintain their core service.
“"We are very excited about how we can use the WeatherShift™ application to benefit our projects and clients. Designs that have had to use historic data can now be complemented by future data derived from multiple global climate models." Cole Roberts, associate principal at Arup.
The proprietary tool will also be utilised to minimise building owner’s risk due to increased operational costs and will help owners make better informed investment decisions during the initial design phases on large masterplanning and infrastructure projects.
“"This is a perfect example of how climate science pairing with practice can improve our cities and communities." William Collins, chief technical officer of Argos Analytics and a lead author for both the IPCC Fourth and Fifth Assessments.
To generate the climate calibrated weather files produced by the WeatherShift™ application, a time series adjustment or ‘morphing’ technique was used to generate 8,760 hourly data weather files. The current version of the WeatherShift™ application adjusts weather data for years 2046–2065 and 2081-2100 at user defined points on the distributions for both the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 emissions scenarios.
The WeatherShift™ application represents Arup’s commitment to sustainability, resiliency, and learning. It is just one of over 350 R&D projects funded in the past year. The work builds on past successful work including the C40 Cities, Climate Action in Megacities 2.0, the book Two Degrees: The Built Environment and Our Changing Climate, and work for the UKMet office on future climate.