Developing meteorological year files for diverse extreme climate scenarios is essential for building performance evaluation and thermal resilience design, yet methods for extreme drought remain lacking. To address this gap, this study proposes a novel method for generating Extreme Drought Meteorological Years (EDY) that utilizes the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and run theory, aided by a Composite Drought Index (CDI) for identification. Through its application to six representative Chinese cities, the key parameters were determined as a 12-month SPI time scale and a drought threshold of −1.28. EDY files were generated and benchmarked against Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data to simulate and analyze the cooling and heating load responses of typical office buildings. Results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively identifies historical years characterized by prolonged duration and high-intensity droughts, while revealing a consistent “drought-heat coupling effect” particularly pronounced in arid and high-altitude regions. Compared to TMY, the EDY scenario significantly increased extreme high-temperature frequency across all six cities, with a prevailing decline in relative humidity, though solar radiation exhibited regional variations. Cooling loads increased by 13.46% ± 14.48% during the cooling season, with peak loads consistently exceeding TMY levels; heating loads showed spatial divergence with multiple cities reaching historical extremes, and total annual building energy demand rose by 5.75% ± 3.27%. This study establishes the EDY framework as a fundamental tool for climate-resilient building design and energy system planning under extreme drought conditions.

An appropriate design method is crucial for addressing the varying building insulation demands in different climatic regions. Compared to the mainstream steady-state thermal insulation (STI) design in winter, the dynamic thermal insulation (DTI) design may offer higher design accuracy and enhanced solar energy utilization, but it increases operational complexity. This study uses the STI method as a reference to explore the extensive application potential of the DTI method across various climatic regions of China. Firstly, after simplifying the operation procedure of the existing DTI method, the minimum thermal resistance, interior surface temperatures, and non-guaranteed duration of building external walls, designed using the STI and DTI methods, are obtained and compared in Lhasa through numerical calculation and dynamic simulation. Furthermore, 10 typical cities with high insulation needs are chosen to analyze the application effects of both design methods. The results show that the DTI method, compared to the STI method, not only significantly enhances wall insulation performance and indoor thermal uniformity in Lhasa, but also exhibits superior multi-dimensional application effects in energy conservation, material efficiency, carbon reduction, and cost saving across various cities. These enhancement effects positively correlate with the grading of cities’ suitability for DTI design. Especially in the optimal zone, the maximum difference ratio of energy saving, carbon saving, total cost saving, and material saving can surpass 19%, 15%, 10% and 6.05%, respectively. Finally, this paper introduces an auxiliary indicator to optimize suitability zoning for DTI design, resulting in four main zones and seven sub-zones. This research can guide architects to appropriately choose and apply the DTI design method in various climatic regions of China.

Renewable energy such as solar energy is attracting increasing attention under carbon neutrality. Reliable and precision solar radiation estimations covering county is essential for building performance simulation and solar energy applications. However, existing empirical or reanalysis-based methods for estimating daily and hourly global solar radiation (H and I_h) often oversimplify local climatic effects. Merging the advantage of solar radiation zone and space distance, the reference station model is proposed, which assumes that the solar radiation pattern of the meteorological station is the same as that of the nearest solar radiation station, taking into account spatial distances and similarities in the solar climates. The two-step method of identifying reference station and H and I_h models have been established and analyzed based on 112 solar radiation measurements across China. To verify the accuracy of the reference station model, the comparison is carried out by comparing zone model and individual model. The results show that the minimum Euclidean distance of latitude, altitude and monthly average sunshine duration ratio and the consistent variation trend of monthly average sunshine duration ratio are the criteria for identifying reference station. The sunshine duration ratio is the key index to develop H model. The reference station model demonstrates reliable performance, with the RMSE% of H of 88% stations less than 15%. This work can provide new thoughts and method for improving the solar radiation estimations to assist the low carbon building target.

In current building thermal climate design zones of China, the zoning indicators only include temperature elements without considering the regional difference of air humidity. Therefore, building thermal design strategies in continental climate zone with low relative humidity and marine climate zone with high relative humidity cannot be distinguished by the current building thermal zoning standards. ASHRAE Standard 169 proposes dual definitions for moisture and thermal climate zones, and this method can be extended to the world, including the so-called “China Climate Zones Map”. However, the moisture climate zoning criterion is unsuitable for China’s climate characteristics after climate analysis and building performance evaluation. In present work, a novel building moisture climate zoning method is proposed. The bioclimatic chart was utilized for extracting the outline of building climate through the Gaussian KDE method. Hence, the building moisture climate was classified, the zoning indicator was obtained, and a country-level climate zones map for China was established. The results indicated that the global information matrix served as a helpful guide and reference for planning at the national level. Annual precipitation could be used as a zoning indicator to accurately reflect the regional differences of building moisture climate in China. The approach can provide new thoughts for improving the climate zoning system in current energy-efficient building design standards of China to assist the ultra-low energy consumption target.

When studying the thermal adaptation of building occupants, understanding the effects of different thermal experiences on adaptation is necessary, particularly for moderate and severe heat exposure. However, this area has seen limited research. Further, skin temperature, a common parameter for quantifying thermal sensation, may insufficiently reflect the automatic thermoregulation of the human body. This study investigates the effects of long-term heat exposure on the human body using multiple physiological and subjective indexes. Two heat exposure experiments were conducted on healthy male participants from northern and southern China. Participant responses, including skin temperature, heart rate, heart rate variability, blood volume pulse (BVP), subjective thermal comfort, thermal sensation, thermal acceptability, and normalized high and low frequency values were collected and compared. The results indicated that the subjective responses of northern and southern participants were not significantly different; however, the subjective physiological symptoms and self-reported discomfort of the latter were less than those of the former, indicating that the southern participants had superior heat tolerance. Additionally, the physiological responses of all the participants were largely similar. However, southern participants showed slightly higher normalized high frequency and BVP values, indicating that they have more active vagus nerves and better vasodilation. They also showed a wider acceptable temperature range and better acclimation to heat exposure. Notably, the mean skin temperature could not effectively predict thermal sensation during heat exposure; this was more accurately achieved using the rate of change of skin temperature. These findings suggest that long-term thermal experiences can affect building occupants’ thermal adaptability.