Climate change and building performance: pervasive role of climate change on residential building behavior in different climates

Ongoing climate change is posing new challenges in all fields. The building sector is strongly being affected. Comfort conditions inside buildings can be damaged, even in currently high-performing buildings. Temperatures are expected to rise globally. This study aims to provide an overview of building interior conditions under climate change in four very different climates. The locations under analysis are Miami, Damascus, Izmir, and Yakutsk, falling within the locations defined by the international Köppen-Geiger climate classification as tropical, arid, temperate, and continental. A small residential apartment was chosen as a case study and modeled in Termolog Epix 12. The results are plotted in terms of internal operative temperature in the free-floating regime, on an hourly and yearly basis, for the years 2020, 2050, and 2080. This application concentrates on the building envelope as it asserts that a building with an optimal envelope will need significantly less demand for air-conditioning systems. Moving from 2020 to 2080, maximum indoor operative temperatures increase by 5.8°C in Izmir, 3.7°C in Yakutsk, 3.2°C in Damascus, and 2.3°C in Miami; while minimum operative temperatures increase by 5.4°C in Yakutsk, and by 2.4°C in Miami, 2.2°C in Izmir, and 2.1°C in Damascus. From 2020 to 2080, annual indoor comfort hours decrease by 18% in Miami, increase by only 1.8% and 1.4% in Damascus and Izmir, and remain nearly unchanged in Yakutsk.