Bioclimatic Explorer

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Move over the chart to read a state of the air.

Click two states of the air to draw a process between them.

When each strategy is needed

Every hour of the year, hour of day against day of year, in the colour of the strategy that makes it comfortable (the numbers and colours of the table and the chart).

Comfort of one person after the CBE Thermal Comfort Tool; equations of pythermalcomfort ASHRAE 55-2023, PMVISO 7730, PMVASHRAE 55, adaptiveEN 16798-1, adaptive

PMV after ASHRAE 55-2023: with the relative air speed and dynamic clothing of an active person, and above 0.1 m/s the cooling effect (the drop of air and radiant temperature that gives the same standard effective temperature, SET, in still air). ISO 7730 takes the air speed as it is. The zone is drawn with air and radiant temperature equal, so it reads in operative temperature. Adaptive models: naturally ventilated rooms with occupants who open windows, about 1 to 1.3 met. After Tartarini, Schiavon, Cheung and Hoyt, CBE Thermal Comfort Tool (SoftwareX 2020), and pythermalcomfort (MIT), CBE, UC Berkeley; checked against pythermalcomfort in test/comfort.js.

Bioclimatic potential Olgyay's chart, after Košir and Pajek (BcChart) With the sun on the body (modified)Without the sun (basic)

Each month is a line from its mean daily minimum temperature at its mean daily maximum humidity to its mean daily maximum temperature at its mean daily minimum humidity; the share of the line in each zone is the share of the month. With the sun, the warm end of a month is raised by what the mean irradiance of its sunny hours does for a body in the sun (Olgyay's heat balance), never past the top of the comfort zone (dashed blue), and passive solar heating counts only down to the temperature the month's peak sun can bring to comfort. A monthly reading of the climate, for the first choice of passive measures: not hours, and not a building. After Košir and Pajek, BcChart v2.0 (ISES 2017); zone outlines digitized from their chart by this tool.

Building form for this climate archetypes, from the Mahoney tables

Rules of thumb for this climate Every scaleDistrictSiteBuildingPartsSystems Show all

Local codes and standards

What the building code and the standards of this place ask, where it bears on climate and concept design. A summary to start from, not legal advice: read the source before relying on a value.

Heatwaves and cold spells in the measured record daily ERA5 since 1991; what a typical year leaves out

The mean of each hour of the day over the month: the diffuse and the direct irradiance on a horizontal surface, stacked to the global; the dashed line is the direct irradiance on a surface facing the sun. Hover a month for its mean day in kWh/m².

Sun path Whole year 21 Dec to 21 Jun 21 Jun to 21 Dec Colour: air temperatureColour: radiation benefitColour: shading period (Szokolay)Colour: cumulative sky (145 patches) No shading maskMask: N facadeMask: NEMask: EMask: SE Mask: SMask: SWMask: WMask: NW Round: orthographicRound: stereographic

Every hour with the sun up, by where the sun stands: on the left as compass direction against height, on the right the sky seen from above (north up, the zenith in the middle). Under 20 °C the sun is welcome, from 20 to 27 °C shade helps, over 27 °C shade is needed: what a shading device should block and what it should let pass. Radiation benefit colours each hour by its direct sun (W/m² normal to the beam): blue where it is welcome, red where it is not, pale where it is weak or the air is between 20 and 27 °C. Orthographic keeps the high sun spread out and crowds the low sun at the rim; stereographic gives the low sun more room, as on most printed sun path diagrams.

Daylight factor indoors EN 17037, for this climate

Noon sun at the solstices and equinoxes: the overhang section

The textbook section for the facade that looks toward the equator: the three noon sun angles of the year follow from the latitude alone (90° less the latitude, plus or minus 23.45°). It is a first sizing by geometry; the cards below weigh every hour of the weather file and every orientation.

Optimal shading angles by orientation

Each facade is drawn twice: from the side (section) and from above (plan). The wedges show where the sun stands in the sky as that facade sees it. Orange is sun that arrives when the building is warm and should be shaded; yellow is sun that arrives when it is cold and is worth keeping. A fixed device works when it can cover the orange wedge without covering the yellow one; where the two overlap, only movable shading can tell them apart.

Direct sun on the facade in kWh/m² a year. Left and right as seen looking out; in the drawings the building, the glass and the shading device are in grey and black, with the device's cut-off ray dashed; colour is kept for the sun. The shaded wedges are where the sun stands, as seen in section and in plan, for the middle 80 % of the sun to shade (orange) and of the sun to keep (yellow).

A horizontal device (overhang, louvres) shades the glass wholly when the sun's profile angle is above its cut-off; its depth is that share of the window's height (for louvres, of their spacing). Vertical fins shade wholly when the sun stands further to their side than the cut-off, given for each side. The cut-offs are those that take the most sun to shade for the least sun to keep; “takes” and “costs” are shares of each. Pick a facade above the sun path chart to see its mask.

Solar energy by tilt and direction

Test a window and its shading every hour of the weather file

One window on one facade, with an overhang, a fin on each side and horizontal louvres, each sized here. The share of glass in sun comes from 1,200 points on the glass, each tested against the sun of every hour (to about 2 %). Solar gain is the glass area × its solar factor g × the sun on it: the direct sun that gets past the device, plus the diffuse sky and ground light, which the device is taken not to cut. Hot and cool are the page's bands: over 27 °C and under 20 °C. Inspired by the window tools of susdesign.com; written here from solar geometry and the weather file.

A building opposite the sun and sky it takes from a window

A building parallel to the facade, its top the given height above the window's centre: long (width 0) or of a given width, set to the right of the window's normal by the offset (negative: to the left). Sun is lost in an hour when it stands below the building's skyline in its direction. The vertical sky component (VSC) is the CIE overcast sky's light on the glass as a share of the open sky's on the ground, sky only, integrated over the skyline in 0.5° steps of azimuth (BRE, Site layout planning for daylight, BR 209): 39.6 % for an open sky, 27 % the usual target. The sky from the window shades the overcast sky by its weight in the VSC; the sun's dots are every two hours, hollow where the building hides it. Up the facade, the same building with the window at every height; tinted where the VSC is under 27 %. "Use in the daylight room" sends the angle on the window's normal and the facade to the room below, whose average daylight factor uses that angle. The idea follows Andrew Marsh's overshadowing tools; written here from solar geometry, the CIE sky and the BRE method.

The site and its neighbours shadows of the buildings around an address

Buildings first from the base map's tiles, whose heights do not say whether they were measured; then from OpenStreetMap itself (Overpass) when it answers, as prisms from their base to their top: the tagged height, else 3 m a storey (roof storeys at half), else 9 m, as in Archilyze's 3D view. A click on a building gives its height to change; a click elsewhere moves the address. Roofs are flat, the ground level, trees and courtyards left out. The ground within the radius is cut into a grid of points, the target's walls into panels about 3 m square; each point keeps its skyline, the highest building it sees in each 2° of azimuth, and the sun reaches it in an hour when it stands above that skyline. Shadows at a moment and hours of sun on a day are geometric, a clear sky; sunshine hours from the file count the hours with a direct normal of at least 120 W/m² (the WMO's threshold) at the address's own sun, so they follow the IPCC scenarios and measured years. On the facades: the vertical sky component under the CIE overcast sky (as in the card above; 27 % the usual target), the angle of the skyline on the wall's normal, and the year's and the winter's (October to March) sunshine hours as a share of those of the open ground, the file standing in for BRE's long-term probable sunlight hours (BRE, Site layout planning for daylight and sunlight, BR 209: a window facing within 90° of due south should get 25 % of them, 5 % in winter). "Daylight room" sends a facade's direction and its mean angle on the normal to the room below. Written from solar geometry, the CIE sky and BR 209.

Wind by season and by time of day

Direction the wind comes from, in sixteen sectors; a quarter of the hours at the rim of every rose, as in the year's rose above, so they compare. Calm: under 0.5 m/s. Seasons are meteorological (three whole months), named for the hemisphere of the file. Morning and afternoon are the hours with the sun up before and after its highest point, night the hours with the sun down, from the sun's position at the middle of each hour, so they follow the length of the day through the year.

Hazards at the site EU Taxonomy Appendix A; Class 0, basic hazard screening

Outdoor comfort: Universal Thermal Climate Index

What to provide outdoors, for the period and by season

In the sun: a standing person in the open, with the sky's and the sun's radiation. Under cover: surroundings at air temperature. In the wind: the file's wind at 10 m. Sheltered: 0.5 m/s. Activities count the hours within fixed limits of the index: sitting 9 to 26 °C, walking 0 to 26 °C, play and sport −13 to 26 °C.

How each variable moves the index air temperature against humidity, radiant temperature and wind

Each map varies air temperature and one other variable; the other two stay at the references set above, and the dashed line marks the reference of the map's own variable. "Change from the reference" is the index at a point minus the index at the same air temperature with that variable at its reference. Grey: outside the range of the index's polynomial (radiant minus air temperature from −30 to 70 K, vapour pressure up to 5 kPa); wind is held between 0.5 and 17 m/s. Dots: the open file's hours whose other two variables lie near the references (humidity within ±10 %, radiant minus air within ±5 K, wind within ±1 m/s), so the colour under each dot holds for that hour; their number is at the top right of each map. Radiant temperature is that of a person standing in the open.

Comfort in a street draw the section: drag elements in; drag the dimension ticks, roofs and treetops; turn the key plan

The street runs on without end in both directions; the compass turns it, and the left side is on the left looking the way the arrow points. The probe is a standing person (1.1 m) to drag across; the profile repeats it every metre or so (UTCI only; PET at the probe). Open ground has the probe's surface and the file's wind. The period and hours are the UTCI card's; "one hour" shows the month's sunniest day. Surfaces are worked out in cells of about half a metre (walls 1.5 m) every half hour of the year: the sun through crowns at their transmissivity (deciduous trees bare outside April to October, mirrored south of the equator), reflections among the strips and walls, sky and surface long-wave, convection, conduction into 0.3 m of wall over a room at 22 °C and 0.5 m of ground, and evaporation from water (0.3 m deep) and grass. The person's radiant temperature weights six directions (Thorsson et al. 2007; SOLWEIG), with the sun on the body. Wind: the file's 10 m wind is carried up the open profile to 60 m and down the city's (displacement 0.7 H, roughness 0.1 H; Grimmond and Oke 1999) to the roofs; in the street its part along the street, times 2/π · exp(−H/4W) (Masson 2000). Cars, bicycles and trams are drawn, not modelled; the air temperature is the file's everywhere (trees and water cool surfaces and people here, not the air). The question is the one PALM-4U's biometeorology answers for a whole district; here it is one section, written from the published methods, not PALM's code.

each month as shares of its hours

Statistics by month of the hours chosen

One variable against another

The months, hours and filter above apply to every chart here. Week by week: the lowest to the highest of the hours chosen, the middle half of them (25 to 75 %) and the median; for the dry bulb temperature, the adaptive limits of ASHRAE 55-2023 for each day (neutral temperature 0.31 × the prevailing mean outdoor temperature + 17.8 °C, ±3.5 K for 80 % and ±2.5 K for 90 % acceptability, where the prevailing mean of the seven days before lies between 10 and 33.5 °C). The table of the day gives the median of each hour of each month. Colours come in steps with round limits; the map of the year gives the share of the hours chosen in each step. One variable against another: the hours fall into a grid of 72 by 36 cells, each coloured by the mean of the third variable over its hours, or by their number; hover a cell for both. Wet bulb, humidity ratio, vapour pressure and enthalpy are worked out at the site's pressure (ASHRAE Fundamentals, chapter 1); sun altitude and azimuth only while the sun is up; the UTCI and the mean radiant temperature in the open as in the outdoor comfort card. Percentiles are sample quantiles by linear interpolation (Hyndman and Fan 1996, definition 7); the standard deviation is that of the sample. "The same for every climate" keeps a fixed scale, widened only where the file goes beyond it.

Prescriptive envelope for this climate zone ASHRAE 90.1International (IECC)National code

Glazing specification by facade

Thermal mass

Time lag of a wall

Weathering of materials freeze–thaw, salts, wetness, carbonation, roof temperatures

Moisture: condensation in the wall and mould at its surface EN ISO 13788, month by month

A room through the year: overheating and what each measure does EN ISO 13790 hourly; EN 16798-1 and CIBSE TM52

Active systems and what this climate gives them

Indications from the weather file alone. Heat pumps are taken at 45 % of the ideal performance with water at 35 °C; photovoltaics at 20 % efficiency and a performance ratio of 0.8.

Cost-optimal and zero energy: what a house costs over the years