Details:SourcesforclimateData
Test reference years:
The German National Meteorological Service DWD offers test reference years for all climatic regions in Germany, representing typical as well as extreme weather situations:
"New Test Reference Years (TRYs) have been worked out for Germany. Test Reference Years are datasets of selected meteorological elements for each hour of the year. They provide climatological boundary conditions for simulating calculations on an hourly basis, in the first place for the operation of heating and air conditioning systems. On the basis of a factor and cluster analysis the Federal Republic has been divided into 15 regions. For each region a representative station has been determined and a Test Reference Year has been prepared. They replace the previous Test Reference Years of the old West German states. For those states which acceded to the Federal Republic after unification such datasets are available for the first time. A Test Reference Year contains characteristic weather data of a representative year. The weather sequences have been chosen on the basis of an analysis of the Grosswetterlagen in such a way that the seasonal mean values of the individual meteorological elements (especially of temperature and humidity) of the representative stations mainly correspond with their 30-years mean values. As heating and air conditioning equipment also have to be designed for extreme situations, additional datasets with the same data structure for a very cold winter (December 1984 to February 1985) and an extremely hot summer (June to August 1983) have been compiled."
([1])
Unfortunately, these new test reference years (as opposed to the 'old' test reference years of 1986) do not contain precipitation data any more. They are thus not suitable for investigations involving the influence of rain.
The representative stations for the test reference years have already been
predefined in WUFI's climate selection
map. Just copy the respective files into WUFI's Climate
folder, on the next start WUFI will recognize the files. They can then easily be selected
via the climate selection map.
METEONORM:
The Swiss METEOTEST company has developed METEONORM, a program for creating synthetic hourly weather data, based on measured long-term mean values:
"METEONORM 5.0 (Edition 2003) is based on over
18 years of experience in the development of meteorological databases for energy
applications. It is a comprehensive meteorological reference, incorporating a catalogue
of meteorological data and calculation procedures for solar applications and system design
at any desired location in the world. METEONORM addresses engineers, architects, teachers,
planners and anyone interested in solar energy and climatology.
...
Several databases from different parts of the world have been combined and checked for
their reliability. In the present version, most of the data is taken from the GEBA
(Global Energy Balance Archive), from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO/OMM)
Climatological Normals 1961-1990 and from the Swiss database compiled by MeteoSwiss.
Monthly climatological (long term) means are available for the following parameters:
- global radiation
- ambient air temperature
- humidity
- precipitation, days with precipitation
- wind speed and direction
- sunshine duration
...
For many regions of the world, measured data may only be applied within a radius of
50 km from weather stations. This makes it necessary to interpolate parameters between
stations. Interpolation models for solar radiation, temperature and additional parameters,
allowing application at any site in the world, are included in the software.
...
From the monthly values (station data, interpolated data or imported data), METEONORM
calculates hourly values of all parameters using a stochastic model. The resulting time
series correspond to "typical years" used for system design.
([2])
Note: METEONORM can create files in the
TRY format which can be directly read by
WUFI.
Austrian Test Reference Years
In addition to the three weather files included with WUFI, weather data for numerous other Austrian locations are available.
The distributor for these data is
QUADRUPLE-M Elsässer GmbH
Technisches Büro für Bauphysik
GF Dr. Manfred Elsässer
Erzherzog-Eugen-Straße 14/1
A-6020 Innsbruck
Tel.: +43 512 251401
Fax: +43 512 378550
Mobil: +43 664 4324814
E-mail: office@quad-m.at oder manfred.elsaesser@uibk.ac.at
ASHRAE CD-ROM: International Weather for Energy Calculations (IWEC)
"Contains "typical" weather data in ASCII format, suitable for use with building energy simulation programs, for 227 locations outside the USA and Canada. The files are derived from up to 18 years of DATSAV3 hourly weather data originally archived at the National Climatic Data Center. The weather data are supplemented by solar radiation estimated on an hourly basis from earth-sun geometry and hourly weather elements, particularly cloud amount information. This CD is the result of ASHRAE Research Project 1015. The CD contains the user's manual and complete research report in PDF, the weather data in printable ASCII format and a version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. To run Acrobat Reader, a 486 or Pentium-based computer and either Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.5 or later is required. Will also run on a Macintosh. For Windows 95 and NT, 8MB or RAM (16MB recommended) and 10MB of free hard-disk space are required."
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Note: the IWEC weather data do not contain quantitative rain data but only a rain indicator reporting rain intensity categories like "light", "moderate", "heavy", etc. As long as it has not been worked out which representative hourly quantities corresponding to these categories should be used in hygrothermic simulations, WUFI will not use rain data in calculations performed with *.IWC files.
The CD contains files for the following locations:
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Japanese Weather Data
Weather data for 842 Japanese locations are available (Expanded AMeDAS Weather Data).
The distributor for these data is
([4])
These locations have already been predefined in WUFI's climate selection map (see there for a list of locations). Just copy the respective files into WUFI's Climate folder; on the next start WUFI will recognize the files. They can the easily be selected via the climate selection map.
