Search

There have been fruitful publications on thermal comfort of urban residential buildings in China. However, there is a lack of reviews on this topic to perform a comprehensive analysis and find opportunities to meet occupants' thermal comfort needs while improving building energy efficiencies. This paper addresses this issue by presenting a systematic review on the advancements in research on thermal comfort in urban residential buildings in China. Firstly, two common thermal comfort research approaches, i.e., field studies and laboratory studies, are discussed. Secondly, eleven main thermal comfort evaluation indicators are summarized. Finally, this paper analyzes the thermal comfort survey data from different researchers, discusses the impacts of adaptive behaviors on human thermal comfort, and provides recommendations for future research on urban residential thermal comfort. It was found that people have higher and higher requirements for their indoor thermal environment as time goes by, especially in the winter; the thermoneutral temperature is higher in warmer climate regions in the summer but lower in the winter than in colder climate regions; the thermoneutral temperature tends to increase with the indoor air temperature due to an adaptation to the indoor thermal environment. The outcomes of this paper provide valuable information on thermal comfort behaviors of urban residents in different climate zones in China, which can serve as a resource for the academic community conducting future research on thermal comfort and assist policymakers in enhancing building energy efficiencies without compromising the occupants' comfort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the metrological procedure carried out for the evaluation of the building influence on air temperature measurements. This evaluation aims to produce reliable conclusions, information, and data to contribute to the WMO siting classification schemes for air temperature measurements. For this purpose, a field experiment was designed, deployed, and carried out. As a result, one-year-lasting air temperature measurements were collected and analyzed. In this field experiment, a 200 m wide building is the unique artificial heat source and the unique object projecting shades over a flat surface (no discernible slope) in an open space bigger than 40,000 m2, covered with short grass. Eight calibrated thermometers, equipped with the same model of artificially ventilated radiation shields, were set up at a height of 1.5 m from the ground and at different distances from a 200 m wide building. This configuration provides the observation of the horizontal air temperature radially distributed from the building and, as a conclusion, it enables the quantification of the building influences on air temperature measurements at different distances from the building. This document describes the field experiment, the analysis procedure, the evolution of the building influence on air temperature measurements along the day, and the impact of other meteorological parameters on this building effect. Two different building effects are observed: the positive building effect, where the air temperature decreases with the distance to the building, and the negative building effect, where the air temperature increases with the distance to the building. It is also noticed that the building influence is higher on clear days and the daily maximum building influence values are directly linked with the corresponding maximum solar irradiance. The influence of wind on the building effect is also analyzed, reaching the conclusion that due to characteristic of local winds, in terms of low speed and direction, the wind impact could be considered as negligible. The maximum values of building influence on air temperature measurements, the associated uncertainty analysis, and the conclusions are presented in this paper. All these points have been addressed using metrological principles with the purpose of giving consistency and robustness to the evidence presented here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses a crucial gap in understanding the impact of urban morphologies on the canopy urban heat islands (CUHI) effect. The selection of reference stations lacks a unified standard, and their surface air temperature (SAT) sequences are also inevitably influenced by urbanization. However, synchronous observational data from relocated meteorological stations could provide high-quality sample data for studying CUHI. Utilizing remote sensing techniques, the findings of this paper revealed that the observation environment of stations after relocation exhibited remarkable representativeness, with their observation sequences accurately reflecting the local climatic background. The differences in synchronized observation sequences could characterize the CUHI intensity (CUHII). Among the various factors, land use parameters and landscape parameters played particularly significant roles. Furthermore, the fitting performance of the random forest (RF) model for both training and testing data was significantly superior to that of the linear model and support vector regression (SVR) model. Additionally, the influence of local circulation on CUHI could not be overlooked. The mechanisms by which urban morphologies affect CUHII under different circulation backgrounds deserve further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environmental temperature and humidity are crucial factors for the normal growth and development of arbor tree cuttings by altering their hormone levels and influencing their physiological activities. Developing a temperature and humidity environmental model for arbor tree cuttings serves as a key technique to improve the adjustment performance of environmental parameters in facility agriculture systems and enhance the rooting rate of cuttings. This paper provides a comprehensive summary of current research on the inherent characteristics of cuttings and the factors influencing environmental temperature and humidity. It explores the mechanisms of interaction between the inherent characteristics of cuttings and the factors influencing environmental temperature and humidity. This paper investigates the interactive relationships among the factors affecting environmental temperature and humidity. It analyzes methods to improve the efficiency of constructing temperature and humidity environmental models for arbor tree cuttings. To enhance the transferability of the environmental model, the necessary physiological activities under the influence of plant hormones are generalized as common physiological traits in the growth and development of cuttings. In addition, this paper explores the factors influencing the air and substrate temperature and the humidity in facility agriculture systems as well as two types of facilities for controlling environmental temperature and humidity. Furthermore, it reviews the research progress in environmental models from both mechanistic and data-driven perspectives. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the characteristics associated with these two model categories. Building upon this, the paper summarizes and discusses methods employed in constructing temperature and humidity environmental models for arbor tree cuttings. In addition, it also anticipates the application of deep learning techniques in the construction of temperature and humidity environmental models for arbor cuttings, including utilizing machine vision technology to monitor their growth status. Finally, it proposes suggestions for building physiological models of fruit tree-like arbor cuttings at different growth stages. To enhance the transferability of environmental models, the integration of physiological models of cuttings, environmental models, and control system performance are suggested to create an environmental identification model. This paper aims to achieve control of the common physiological activities of cuttings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative air ions (NAIs) are crucial for assessing the impact of forests on wellbeing and enhancing the physical and mental health of individuals. They serve as pivotal indicators for assessing air quality. Comprehensive research into the distribution patterns of NAI concentrations, especially the correlation between NAI concentrations and meteorological elements in tourist environments, necessitates the accumulation of additional long-term monitoring data. In this paper, long-term on-site monitoring of NAI concentrations, air temperature, relative humidity, and other factors was conducted in real time over 24 h, from April 2020 to May 2022, to explore the temporal dynamic patterns of NAIs and their influencing factors. The results showed that (1) the daily dynamics of NAI concentrations followed a U-shaped curve. The peak concentrations usually occurred in the early morning (4:30–8:00) and evening (19:10–22:00), and the lowest concentrations usually occurred at noon (12:50–14:45). (2) At the monthly scale, NAI concentrations were relatively high in February, August, and September and low in January, June, and December. At the seasonal scale, NAI concentrations were significantly higher in winter than in other seasons, with higher concentrations occurring in the summer and autumn. (3) Relative humidity, air temperature, and air quality index (AQI) were the primary factors that influenced NAI concentrations. Relative humidity showed a significant positive correlation with NAI concentrations, while air temperature and AQI both exhibited a significant negative correlation with NAI concentrations. Higher air quality corresponds to higher NAI concentrations. Our research provides new insights into NAI temporal dynamics patterns and their driving factors, and it will aid in scheduling outdoor recreation and forest health activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper evaluates the usability of remote satellite-based and proximal ground-based agrometeorological data sources for precision agriculture and crop production in Croatia. The compared agrometeorological datasets stem from the open-access data sources Copernicus CDS and the Agri4Cast portal, and commercial in situ agrometeorological stations (PinovaMeteo) which monitor environmental parameters relevant to the physiological state of crops. The study compares relevant parameters for 10 different locations in Croatia for three consecutive years (2019, 2020, and 2021) to investigate whether model-based data from ERA5-Land and Agri4Cast are well-correlated with ground measurements from independent in situ stations (PinovaMeteo) for specific agrometeorological parameters (air and soil temperature, and precipitation). Our results indicate the following: both the ERA5-Land and Agri4Cast datasets show mostly strong positive correlations with ground observations for air temperature, modest correlations for soil temperature, but modest or even low correlations for precipitation. Analysis of the residuals indicates higher overall residual values, especially in areas with complex topography and near large bodies of water or the sea, and deviations of residuals that may limit the usability of satellite- and model-based data for decision-making in agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on spatio-temporal geostatistical modeling remains a critical challenge in numerous scientific and engineering disciplines. This paper introduces a novel extension of dual kriging, called spatio-temporal dual kriging (ST-DK), in which drift functions with fixed and adaptive coefficients are established. The approach appears to be effective in modeling complex spatio-temporal dynamics, particularly when relevant auxiliary variables exert substantial influence on the target variable. To illustrate its performance, we compare the ST-DK model with the classical spatio-temporal regression kriging (ST-RK) and geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) models for estimating temperature and air pressure data from Thailand in 2018. Our findings demonstrate that both the ST-DK and ST-RK models when utilizing adaptive coefficients outperform their fixed coefficient counterparts. Furthermore, the ST-DK method consistently exhibits superior performance compared to the ST-RK and GTWR methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper experimentally analyses an indoor environment assessment of a large group of respondents regarding their subjective perception of overall comfort, indoor air quality and humidity. The questionnaire survey was applied as a testing method together with measurements of the physical parameters conducted with a microclimate meter. Two types of environment were analysed: educational rooms and the climate chamber. The comparative analysis of the sensations experienced within them indicates that they generate quite similar responses; however, some discrepancies have been identified. The overall comfort of the climate chamber was typically assessed as being higher than that of the educational rooms at the same air temperature. The most favourable air temperature in the climate chamber was ca. 20.7 °C, while in the educational rooms it was ca. 22.3 °C. The most preferable conditions in the climate chamber occurred at a thermal sensation vote of −0.4 ("pleasantly slightly cool"), while in the educational rooms it occurred at +0.2 ("neutral/pleasantly slightly warm"). Quite strong correlations between overall comfort and indoor air quality as well as between humidity assessment and humidity preference votes were observed, which did not seem to depend on the type of environment. These findings are important because results from the simulated conditions are often used in the analyses of actual living/working environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is devoted to the analysis of air temperature and humidity changes during the two solar eclipses of 26 December 2019 and 21 June 2020 in Saudi Arabia based on data we collected from two different sites. We highlight the complexity of humidity's response to a solar eclipse, which is quite different from temperature's response. During the December event, the Sun rose already partially eclipsed, while for the June eclipse, it was only partial at Riyadh. This difference apparently affected the observed response on the recorded variables: temperature, relative humidity (RH), and vapor pressure (VP) in the two events. Changes in these variables went unnoticed for the first eclipse since they were within the natural variability of the day; yet for the other, they showed evident alterations in the slopes of the major parameters, which we analyze and discuss. A decrease in temperature of 3.2 °C was detected in Riyadh. However, RH and VP showed an oscillation that we explain taking into account a similar effect reported in other eclipses. We measured a time lag of about 15 min from the eclipse central phase in the city. Related fluctuations and dynamics from the computed rates of the temporal variation of temperature and RH are scrutinized. Furthermore, an overdue significant review of terrestrial atmospheric parameters is also offered in the context of the eclipse meteorology, particularly related to desert atmospheres. We also try to identify the influence of solar eclipses in similar environments doing a broad inter-comparison with other observations of these variables in the Near East, northern Africa, and in the United States. These inter-comparisons reveal how complex and dissimilar the response of the lower atmosphere to a solar eclipse can be within a desert environment and other similar environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]