Climate Change and Wind-Driven Rain – a Preliminary Study about Climate Uncertainties

Paper i proceeding, 2013

Under changing climate conditions, acceptable functionality of buildings and their adaptation to climate are required. More rain and extreme conditions in future make buildings and the built environment more vulnerable. There are currently several scenarios regarding possible future climatic conditions. Results from the impact analysis of climate change can be significantly affected by the selected climate scenario. Therefore it is recommended to do not rely on few climate scenarios while performing the impact analysis. This paper suggests a simple method to analyse the importance of climate uncertainties in the impact assessment of climate change on wind-driven rain (WDR). The method is based on the calculation of Stokes number; a dimensionless number which correlates strongly with the catch ratio of the wind-driven rain. Preliminary results have been obtained by studying the distribution of Stokes number during 1961-2100 for several climate scenarios. Distributions demonstrate the probable differences in WDR calculations, induced by the climate uncertainties. Three uncertainty factors are considered in this work; global climate models, initial conditions and spatial resolutions of the climate scenarios. Based on the results all the three factors can induce changes in WDR calculations. However the magnitudes of changes are not the same among the uncertainty factors. Using the Stokes number helps to evaluate the importance of climate uncertainties before the WDR simulations.