Estimating Combined Impact of Urban Heat Island Effect and Climate Change on Cooling Requirements of Tall Residential Buildings in Hot-Humid Locations

Climate change estimates are critical in developing long-term solutions to the dwelling problems that we currently face. This study combines the impact of climate change and the urban heat island effect to study the outcomes of future weather conditions on the cooling of tall residential buildings in hot and humid climates. For the year 2050, we calculate the impact of urban characteristics through the urban weather generator and climate change through the world weather gen tool on the micro-climatic condition of a district in a newly constructed city near Doha, Qatar, the Lusail City. A total of four weather files are compared to the weather data gathered from the established weather station in the city (two for the year 2020 and three for the year 2050). Results reveal that once the open weather map file has been processed through the urban weather generator (UWG) first and then the climate change model, the MAE increases to 3.30, and the RMSE goes to 3.8 with a maximum deviation of 11.4°c occurring. If the process is done the other way around, the climate change model is applied first, and then the UWG file is applied, the MAE of 3.46 is with RMSE of 3.94 with a maximum deviation of 11.3°c occurring. The impact of these weather files is then assessed on a tall residential building in Lusail. A significant increase of 777197 kwh or 20% is seen in the openweather map file that has been processed first through the climate change model and then through the urban weather generator (as compared to the rural weather file); an increase of 739983 kwh or 19% is seen in the openweather map file that has been processed first through the UWG and then through the climate change model; finally close to 22.6 percent increase or 874088 kwh is seen in the openweather map file that has been processed first through the climate change model and then through the climate change model.