Infrastructure, Design & Changing Climate

Goal

Led by Ph.D. student Gesangyangi, we evaluate how climate change will impact building design requirements, such as heating and cooling specifications.

Objectives

Our approach to this project includes several steps:

  1. Recalculate the climate design chart (2013 edition) produced by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)

  2. Use climate models to produce temperature and precipitation related design conditions for Madison, WI under different warming scenarios

  3. Expand this analysis to multiple cities in the eastern United States

  4. Analyze how the change of design conditions will affect electricity use

Research Outcomes

  • Developed future climate design conditions over Madison, Wisconsin under two different climate change scenarios called, RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5

  • Rescaled historical hourly temperature to future hourly temperature for 16 cities in the eastern US

Funding Partner:

University of Wisconsin—Madison Office of Sustainability

Timeline:

2019 – Present

Tools:

Integrated Surface Database (ISD), Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), University of Wisconsin Probabilistic Downscaled Data (UWPD)

Core Team Members:

Tracey Holloway, Gesangyangji, Daniel Vimont

Select an image to enlarge

Under the high emission scenario, the pattern of total energy demand (heating + cooling) over the Eastern U.S. is expected to be more homogenous due to the asymmetric changes in heating and cooling demand in northern and southern states.