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A global typical meteorological year (TMY) database on ERA5 dataset

  • Research Article
  • Advances in Modeling and Simulation Tools
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Abstract

The outdoor climate condition is one of the deterministic factors influencing building energy consumption. Building performance simulation (BPS) tools usually adopt typical meteorological year (TMY) as the outdoor climate input. Despite that many scholars and institutes have developed TMY datasets, these datasets are usually based on distinct data sources and methods. Considering the increase of international cooperation construction projects, compatible TMY dataset for different countries is in urgent need. This paper presents a global typical meteorological year (TMY) database covering 38,947 stations worldwide based on the fifth-generation atmospheric reanalysis product released by the European Center (ERA5). The data is created with Chinese Standard Weather Database (CSWD) method to reflect the average level of historical weather. The dataset is saved in a 55 GB database of compressed CSV files and a website is established where users can download their required TMY data for certain cities according to the longitude and latitude information. A systematic validation is conducted to confirm the feasibility of ERA5 as data source and validity of generated TMY data. This TMY-ERA5 dataset is fundamental and essential in building system designs of international construction projects, building performance simulation, especially for some countries lacking ground meteorological stations or missing meteorological year data in the building sector. It can be used as references for other meteorological climate studies.

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Abbreviations

AMY:

annual meteorological year

BPS:

building performance simulation

CDD:

cooling degree day

CMA:

China Meteorological Administration

CSWD:

Chinese standard weather database

ECMWF:

European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts

ERA5:

the fifth generation ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis of the global climate

HDD:

heating degree day

IFS:

integrated forecasting system

RMSE:

root mean square error

TMY:

typical meteorological year

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52225801) and Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 8222019).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Building Energy Research Center, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Yi Wu, Chenxi Gui & Da Yan

  2. School of Environment and Energy Engineering, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Beijing, 100044, China

    Jingjing An

  3. National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China

    Chan Xiao

Authors
  1. Yi Wu
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  2. Jingjing An
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  3. Chenxi Gui
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  4. Chan Xiao
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  5. Da Yan
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Contributions

Yi Wu: methodology, data curation, writing, and original draft. Jingjing An: methodology and conceptualization. Chenxi Gui: methodology and data curation. Chan Xiao: investigation and data resources. Da Yan: supervision, conceptualization, and methodology.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Da Yan.

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Declaration of competing interest

The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

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Wu, Y., An, J., Gui, C. et al. A global typical meteorological year (TMY) database on ERA5 dataset. Build. Simul. 16, 1013–1026 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-023-1015-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-023-1015-3

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