Climate Change Scenario Modeling

Roovie can modify weather files to model how buildings will perform under future climate conditions.

The system takes a standard 8,760-hour weather file and applies mathematically precise adjustments across five categories: temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind, and extreme events. The result is a new weather file that represents a plausible future climate scenario, ready for simulation.

This is not a rough approximation. Each modification category has multiple parameters that can be tuned independently, and the system includes IPCC-aligned presets based on Representative Concentration Pathway scenarios.

In One Line

Adjust weather data for future climate conditions. Simulate how your building performs in a warmer, wetter, or more extreme world.

Why This Matters

Buildings designed today will operate for 30 to 50 years or more. The weather conditions they experience in 2050 will be measurably different from the weather data used in today's energy models.

Standard practice uses Typical Meteorological Year weather files based on historical observations. These files represent what the climate looked like, not what it will look like.

Roovie's climate change modeler bridges that gap by allowing teams to adjust weather data based on established climate science, then simulate the building against those adjusted conditions.

How It Works

Baseline weather file (8,760 hourly records)
  → Select IPCC preset or configure custom modifications
  → Preview changes in comparison charts
  → Save as new modified weather file
  → Use in simulations to model future building performance

The baseline weather file is never altered. A new weather file is created with the modifications applied, preserving the original for comparison.

The Five Modification Categories

Temperature

Controls how air temperature changes across the year. Adjustments are applied to dry bulb, wet bulb, dew point, and sky temperature.

• Uniform Offset — a global temperature shift applied to every hour. Typical range: minus 5 to plus 10 degrees Celsius. The most direct way to model overall warming.
• Seasonal Amplification — controls how much seasonal variation increases or decreases. A value of 1.2 means summers get 20 percent hotter and winters get 20 percent colder relative to the annual mean.
• Summer Bias — additional warming applied specifically to summer months, modeling disproportionate summer heat increases.
• Winter Bias — additional offset for winter months, modeling how winter warming may lag or lead summer changes.
• Diurnal Amplification — controls the day-night temperature range. Higher values mean hotter days and colder nights.

These five parameters can be combined to produce nuanced temperature scenarios. For example, a uniform warming of 2 degrees combined with 1.2x seasonal amplification and a 1-degree summer bias creates a scenario where summers are significantly hotter while winters warm less dramatically.

Humidity

Controls moisture content in the atmosphere.

• Relative Humidity Offset — direct adjustment to relative humidity values, clamped to the 0 to 100 percent range.
• Dew Point Offset — shifts the dew point temperature, which is more physically accurate than adjusting relative humidity alone.
• Seasonal Pattern — uniform (year-round), summer-increase (wetter summers), or winter-increase (wetter winters).

Solar Radiation

Controls how much solar energy reaches building surfaces.

• Global Radiation Scale — multiplies total horizontal radiation. A value of 0.9 means 10 percent less solar energy, modeling increased cloud cover or aerosol loading.
• Diffuse Ratio Shift — adjusts the balance between direct and diffuse radiation. Positive values mean more scattered, cloudier light.
• Cloud Cover Offset — direct adjustment to sky cover on the 0-to-10 scale.

Solar modifications affect heating and cooling loads, photovoltaic generation, and daylighting calculations.

Wind

Controls wind speed and direction patterns.

• Speed Scale — multiplies all wind speeds. A value of 1.2 means 20 percent stronger winds, affecting infiltration, natural ventilation, and comfort.
• Gust Amplification — additional amplification applied to peak wind speeds, modeling more intense storm events.
• Direction Shift — rotates prevailing wind direction by a specified number of degrees, modeling changes in atmospheric circulation patterns.

Extreme Events

Controls the intensity and duration of extreme weather.

• Heatwave Intensification — multiplies temperatures above the 95th percentile. Models more severe heat events.
• Heatwave Duration Extension — adds consecutive days to existing hot periods. Models compound heat events that stress cooling systems.
• Cold Snap Intensification — multiplies temperatures below the 5th percentile. Can be reduced to model winter warming.
• Storm Frequency Scale — scales the frequency of high-wind and high-cloud-cover events. Models increased or decreased storm activity.

IPCC-Aligned Presets

The system includes three pre-configured scenarios based on IPCC AR5 Representative Concentration Pathways, calibrated for a 2050 time horizon:

RCP 2.6 — Low Emissions

Best-case scenario with aggressive emissions reductions.

• Temperature: plus 1.0 degrees uniform warming, slight seasonal amplification
• Extreme events: 1.1x heatwave intensity, 1 extra day of duration
• Minimal changes to humidity, solar, and wind

RCP 4.5 — Moderate Emissions

Intermediate scenario with some mitigation efforts.

• Temperature: plus 1.8 degrees uniform warming, 10 percent seasonal amplification, half-degree summer bias
• Humidity: plus 2 percent relative humidity, summer-increase pattern
• Extreme events: 1.2x heatwave intensity, 3 extra days of duration, 1.15x storm frequency

RCP 8.5 — High Emissions

Business-as-usual scenario with continued high emissions.

• Temperature: plus 2.5 degrees uniform warming, 20 percent seasonal amplification, 1-degree summer bias
• Humidity: plus 5 percent relative humidity, 1.5-degree dew point shift
• Solar: 2 percent radiation reduction, increased diffuse ratio
• Extreme events: 1.4x heatwave intensity, 7 extra days of duration, 1.3x storm frequency

Custom Scenario

An empty template for building bespoke climate scenarios from scratch.

Preview Before Saving

All modifications are previewed before being committed:

• Real-time charts show how the modified weather data compares to the baseline
• Statistics panel shows min, max, average, and delta for each weather variable
• Comparison view provides side-by-side visualization of baseline versus modified data
• Cross-city comparison allows dragging in weather data from other locations for context

Modifications can be toggled on and off individually. Each category can be enabled or disabled without deleting its parameters, making it easy to isolate the impact of specific adjustments.

Weather Variables Available

The system tracks 16 weather variables across six categories:

• Temperature: dry bulb, wet bulb, dew point, sky temperature
• Humidity: relative humidity, humidity ratio
• Pressure: atmospheric pressure
• Wind: speed, direction
• Solar radiation: global horizontal, direct normal, diffuse horizontal
• Sky cover: total sky cover, opaque sky cover

All variables are available for visualization, comparison, and export at hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly resolution.

Integration With Simulations

Modified weather files are saved as first-class weather documents in Roovie's library. They can be:

• Assigned to any building for simulation
• Used in batch simulation runs across a portfolio
• Compared against baseline weather simulations in Roovie's comparison tools
• Referenced in reports with full metadata about which modifications were applied

The modified weather file carries its scenario type (such as RCP 4.5) and modification parameters as metadata, so the provenance of the climate scenario is always traceable.

What Makes This Different

Most climate-adjusted energy analysis requires downloading modified weather files from external tools, manually configuring parameters, and importing the result. The analysis workflow and the weather modification workflow are disconnected.

Roovie integrates climate modification directly into the building analysis platform:

• Modifications are configured visually with sliders and presets
• Preview shows impacts before committing
• Modified files are immediately available for simulation
• Results can be compared against baseline weather in the same viewport
• The full modification history is stored with the weather file

The separation of temperature into uniform, seasonal, and diurnal components — rather than a single global offset — allows for physically realistic scenarios where summer warming outpaces winter warming, or where nighttime temperatures rise faster than daytime peaks.

Bottom Line

Roovie's climate change modeler takes standard weather files and applies science-based modifications across temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind, and extreme events. IPCC-aligned presets provide ready-to-use scenarios, while granular parameter controls support custom climate analysis.

The result is a new weather file — previewed, saved, and immediately usable for simulation — that represents how the building's environment will change over its operational lifetime. That makes it possible to design buildings that perform well not just today, but across the climate conditions they will actually experience.