ABSTRACT
Climate is, by its very nature, variable and so any attempt to predict future climates for, say, 50 to 100 years from now (the lifetime of a building) is, given the intricacy, interdependencies and uncertainties in climate modelling, a diffi cult and contentious area of research. What is defi nitely known, based upon actual thermometer measurements taken since the mid-nineteenth century, is that global air temperatures are rising. There is also a widespread scientifi c belief that the climate change arising from global warming is the result of increased greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. The future changes to weather patterns that might result from global warming are dependent upon a vast number of parameters, including greenhouse emission scenarios and geographical location, but the major predicted changes include drier and warmer summers, milder and wetter winters and rising sea levels. In addition, extreme climatic events such as more very hot days and heat waves, heavier periods of intense rain and a greater frequency of storms, are expected to occur. Current building construction and environmental design procedures are based on historical weather data that may well be quite different from the climatic conditions a new building of today could be experiencing 50 years from now (TCPA 2007). In this chapter the potential impacts of climate change on buildings will be discussed and some design options to make buildings more resilient to future climates considered.
