Site weather data is an essential input for building energy, comfort and daylighting simulations, providing the key environmental conditions needed to drive the calculations. Until recently most weather data used in building simulations has been based purely on historic readings and has only been available for scattered locations. But as greater emphasis is placed on design for optimal performance, using realistic weather data specific to the project site and selected for the intended design purpose is now an integral part of the simulation process. And as climate change increasingly influences the building performance agenda, using traditional "typical year" weather data for designing tomorrow's buildings that need to perform well in future climatic conditions is no longer appropriate.

Climate Analytics solves the problem by providing access to a vast database of accurately measured weather data with options to support all types of building performance simulation, including "typical year", "actual year" and "design year" weather files. With access to these best-practice weather data selection tools, you will have complete confidence in the climatic inputs to your building performance calculations.

Types of hourly weather data

Hourly weather data for building performance simulation can be broken into three broad types depending on the intended application:

• Typical years such as TMY, TRY and IWEC are representative of long-term weather compiled from 20-30 years of data. They are assembled to match the long term data from a particular location using a particular statistical measure. Typical data is usually “real” data, but may not be a contiguous year - the data may be comprised of months from multiple years. Typical years are often used for standardised compliance and certification simulations.
• Design years usually contain a specific year of weather data where the year is selected for some extreme characteristic such as the warmest run of 4 days. Design year data is often used for overheating analyses for naturally ventilated buildings as well as for heating and cooling design applications.
• Actual years contain a specific year of weather data and are often used for post-occupancy measurement and verification studies with calibrated models where the simulation results are compared to actual utility bills or other measured data. Actual years can also be used as part of a more thorough approach to design or energy analysis.

The Climate Analytics Approach

With Climate Analytics you can access all 3 types of hourly weather data from the same place: