Search

Abstract: Hainan province is the only tropical and island province in China, with the unique climatic and geographical features. It has a different energy performance in public buildings from those in the inland areas. This paper investigated the current situation of energy consumption of the sampled public buildings, including 26 hotels, 24 office buildings and 7 department stores, through analyzing utility billing data, on-site survey and measurement, and site operational records. The breakdowns of energy consumption found out that the electricity dominated the energy consumption for all the sampled buildings and the air conditioning system played a key role in the energy consumption of major building services. By analyzing the main factors for building energy consumption, the annual average energy use indexes were calculated to be 141.63kWh/m2, 87.70kWh/m2, and 166.95kWh/m2 for hotels, office buildings and department stores, respectively. Besides, the comparison between Hainan province and other areas revealed that the building energy consumption of this tropical province was at a low level. Because indoor environment quality can influence the health and work efficiency of humans in buildings, field tests on the indoor environment quality were also carried out, and the performance of indoor environment quality was rated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Early–Middle Eocene palynoflora and paleoclimate of Changchang Basin, Hainan Island, South China, is described in the present paper and is compared with that of the Middle–Late Eocene, Hunchun City, Jilin Province, North China. The nearest living relatives (NLRs) of the recovered palynotaxa suggest a subtropical evergreen or deciduous broad-leaved forest at the center of the basin but a temperate evergreen or deciduous broad-leaved forest and needle-leaved forest growing in the peripheral part of the basin. Based on the climatic preferences of the NLRs, the climate in the Changchang Basin during the Early–Middle Eocene was warm and humid subtropical with a mean annual temperature of 14.2–19.8°C, a mean temperature of the warmest month of 22.5–29.1°C, a mean temperature of the coldest month of 1.7–11.9°C, a difference of temperature between coldest and warmest months of 12.1–24.6°C, a mean annual precipitation of 784.7–1,113.3 mm, a mean maximum monthly precipitation of 141.5–268.1 mm and a mean minimum monthly precipitation of 6.9–14.1 mm. A comparison of the palynoflora and paleoclimate between the Changchang Basin and Hunchun City, suggests essentially a similar climate in South and North China during Eocene time in contrast to the oceanic tropical climate in South China and cool dry temperate climate in North China as at present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]