Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Ensuring accurate microclimate research: How to select representative meteorological data of local climate in microclimate studies
Chinese University of Hong Kong, China.
University of Melbourne, Australia.
Chinese University of Hong Kong, China.
Luleå University of Technology, Department of Civil, Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Architecture and Water. Chinese University of Hong Kong, China.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3438-1182
Show others and affiliations
2025 (English)In: Building and Environment, ISSN 0360-1323, E-ISSN 1873-684X, Vol. 267, no Part B, article id 112166Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Microclimate research has seen significant growth in recent years, particularly in areas such as outdoor thermal comfort, urban ecology, and urban heat mitigation. However, the short-term nature of many studies in this field presents challenges in ensuring that the collected data accurately represents local climate conditions. This paper introduces a novel method to enhance the quality and applicability of microclimate research by quantifying the representativeness of short-term meteorological data. Our approach employs the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) statistic to compare daily meteorological data from nearby stations against long-term climate trends. Key findings demonstrate that this method effectively identifies representative data periods. This method allows researchers to evaluate the representativeness of each day's data according to their specific study objectives, whether focusing on typical or extreme weather conditions. By implementing this framework, researchers can: (a) Post-filter existing data to identify the most representative samples. (b) Quantify the climate representativeness of their findings, enhancing result interpretation and applicability. (c) More confidently generalize conclusions from short-term studies. The paper also provides simplified alternatives to the full method, making it accessible to a wider range of researchers. By adopting this approach, microclimate studies can achieve greater confidence in their data's representativeness, leading to more robust and generalizable conclusions. Our method addresses a key methodological challenge in microclimate research and provides a flexible data assessment framework. This framework enables researchers to systematically evaluate climate data representativeness, enhancing the reliability and applicability of their findings across various urban climate studies, from thermal comfort assessments to climate adaptation strategies.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier Ltd , 2025. Vol. 267, no Part B, article id 112166
Keywords [en]
Microclimate simulation, Microclimate measurement, Data representativeness assessment, Climate data analysis, Urban climate studies
National Category
Climate Science Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
Research subject
Architecture
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-110499DOI: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2024.112166ISI: 001334874900001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85206255998OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ltu-110499DiVA, id: diva2:1907356
Note

Validerad;2024;Nivå 2;2024-11-12 (joosat);

Full text license: CC BY;

Funder: Research Impact Fund (Ref-No: R4040-22, ’Increasing the resilience to the health impacts of extreme cold weather on the older population under future climate change’), Hong Kong Research Grants Council;

Available from: 2024-10-22 Created: 2024-10-22 Last updated: 2025-10-21Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(7764 kB)530 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 7764 kBChecksum SHA-512
8b26a5182d267485fc8759ac05620527bbc9f1968237837cc0add0a068e8ac6735f75f84cdfa1f29dce3e6cff0cd0848f47c4fd9148b04d52be487bf78a97c43
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Lau, Kevin

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Lau, Kevin
By organisation
Architecture and Water
In the same journal
Building and Environment
Climate ScienceMeteorology and Atmospheric Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 531 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 327 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf