Influence of climate change on heating and cooling energy demand in Ireland

✍ Scribed by Tido Semmler; Ray McGrath; Susan Steele-Dunne; Jenny Hanafin; Paul Nolan; Shiyu Wang

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 949 KB
• Volume: 30
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0899-8418
• DOI: 10.1002/joc.1997

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The influence of climate change on heating and cooling energy demand in Ireland is investigated using a small ensemble of regional climate simulation datasets driven by the ERA‐40 reanalysis data and by the global climate model ECHAM5‐OM1 assuming three different greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Simple relationships between commonly used temperature‐based indices and heating/cooling energy demand have been used. It has been shown previously that these relationships are highly correlated even though other parameters such as wind speed, sunniness and cost of energy also influence consumption. Results suggest that the heating energy demand has already slightly decreased in the south of the country for the time period 1981–2000 compared to that in 1961–1980, although the difference might not be a robust signal because of the relatively short averaging time period of 20 years and the model uncertainty, which is in the same order as the simulated changes. However, a clear trend of decreasing heating energy demand is predicted for the rest of this century using longer averaging periods of 40 years. Whereas air conditioning is not an issue in Ireland's current climate, a weak demand might develop towards the end of this century in the southeast of the country in summer. Copyright © 2009 Royal Meteorological Society