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General description
This dataset, also called ERA5-HEAT (Human thErmAL comforT), provides modelled hourly data and is stored in Analysis Ready Cloud Optimised (ARCO) format, which has been implemented for retrieving long time-series for a single point in a efficient way. It provides modelled hourly data for a set of indices representing human thermal stress and discomfort in outdoor conditions. The dataset is organised around two main variables, the mean radiant temperature and the universal thermal climate index. These are calculated from environmental parameters (air temperature, humidity, wind speed, radiation) provided by ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis. The dataset is regularly extended with time as ERA5 data become available.
A throughout description of the database can be found in:
Di Napoli C, Barnard C, Prudhomme C, Cloke HL and Pappenberger F (2021) ERA5-HEAT: A global gridded historical dataset of human thermal comfort indices from climate reanalysis. Geoscience Data Journal 8: 2–10. https://doi.org/10.1002/gdj3.102 |
Methodology
The process to generate this dataset involves:
- Fetching UTCI data in NetCDF format.
- Written to an ARCO Zarr archive (which is similar in structure to netCDF)
- The CDS requests the data from the Zarr archive using xarray and writes the data to netCDF or CSV (as requested).
Data organization and access
The ARCO data is stored as Zarr datacubes.
The data is now available from the Climate Data Store (CDS), either interactively through its download web form or programmatically using the CDS API service:
https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets/derived-utci-historical-timeseries
Thermal comfort indices descriptions
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Figure 1 Graphical explanation of the mean radiant temperature (MRT). Adapted from [4].
Summary variable table
Variable | Description | UNIT |
Mean radiant temperature | Numerical representation of how human beings experience radiation. It applies to a human subject placed in an outdoor environment and irradiated by solar and thermal radiation both directly and diffusely. | K |
Universal thermal climate index | Numerical representation of the thermal comfort/discomfort perceived by a human subject when exposed to outdoor conditions. It is based on a state-of-the-art model that simulates human body’s physiological responses to air temperature, humidity, wind speed and radiation. | K |
Thermal comfort indices algorithm
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