Climate change in the building sector: a scenario analysis in the Mediterranean basin.

The paper presents an energy simulation-based study to investigate the impacts of climate change on the building energy use for heating and cooling in the Mediterranean basin. The air temperature of 24 different general circulation models (GCMs), produced by the World Climate Research in the context of Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) [1], were analysed using different metrics for selecting the most suitable GCM to be used for climate change impact analysis. The data of the selected GCM were used as input to a downscaling method known as "morphing", to generate hourly weather files for 3 future time projections (2035, 2065 and 2090). Finally, in order to assess the building energy use for heating and cooling for the next century, simulations for different case studies were conducted.