Future changes in thermal comfort conditions over China based on multi-RegCM4 simulations

ABSTRACTA set of high resolution (25 km) 21st century climate change projections using the regional climate model RegCM4 driven by four global model simulations were conducted over East Asia under the mid-range RCP4.5 scenario. In the present paper, the authors investigate the change in thermal comfort conditions over china based on an ensemble of the projections, using the index of effective temperature (ET), which considers the aggregate effects of temperature, relative humidity, and wind on human thermal perception. The analysis also accounts for exposure as measured by distributed population amount scenarios. The authors find that the general increase in ET leads to a large increase in population exposure to very hot days (a China-aggregated six-fold increase in ‘person-days’ by the end of the 21st century. There is a decrease in cool, cold, and very cold person-days. Meanwhile, a decrease in comfortable day conditions by 22% person-days is found despite an increase in climate-based comfortable days. ...