Performing a Future Climate Analysis

Design teams are now able to conduct future climate analysis using readily available data that has been derived from future weather projections and climate scenarios. This is essential as it allows designers to implement adaptive strategies that would assist in enhancing thermal resilience and occupant comfort. (Mulville et al., 2025; Colclough & Salaris, 2024)

Climate scenarios are usually presented using certain possible future paths that could be taken and how those paths could impact the climate, hence indicating the degree of climate severity that we are likely to experience:

A2: A high-emissions scenario of regionally driven economic growth with slower technology development and less cooperation on solutions to environmental issues. This pathway produces very high warming resulting from increasingly warm greenhouse gas emissions.

A1B: An alternative pathway which, across all sectors, takes a balanced approach, producing energy from fossil and non-fossil fuels. It symbolises swift economic development and technological creativity, yielding modest warming forecasts.

B1: Low-emissions scenario focusing on sustainability, environmental awareness, and clean technologies. If global efforts toward sustainable development led to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, that would mean less warming.

IPCC Global Climate Projections Doc: Projected temperature increase (Meehl et al., 2007).