Australian Weather and Climate Data Bank 1990-2022 Data Sets completing Beta Testing

Regular readers will be aware that we have been enhancing our in-house software (called ClimateCypher) to embrace the recent improvements in the raw data available from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM). This has enabled the following enhancements to our production of weather and climate data sets:

1. EnergyPlus Weather (EPW) format now available alongside the ACDB (NatHERS) and TMY2 formats in past editions;
2. Inclusion of higher spatial resolution solar data, with values for every 2 x 2 km rather than every 5 x 5 km ‘pixel’ providing improved accuracy for each site;
3. Inclusion of higher temporal resolution solar data, which is now available from satellite observations every 10 minutes rather than hourly (substantially improving accuracy for the hourly solar data in most of our products);
4. Inclusion of half-hourly ceilometer readings for cloud cover in eighths of the sky (oktas) and in Meteorological Aerodrome Reports (MetAR) – rather than estimates based on satellite-derived solar data (and linear interpolation through the hours of darkness);
5. Adoption of more recent data to be pertinent in a changing climate – we have incorporated weather data for 1990-2022 rather than 1990-2015 (as in NatHERS) and offer characterisation of climate data based on the latest 15 years 2008-2022; and
6. Presentation of half-hourly precipitation data – previous offerings either omitted precipitation or were based on daily totals to 9AM o’clock. This new data will greatly improve the ability to model moisture management in buildings and can also be applied to more accurately estimate the self-cleaning performance of renewable energy systems.

These weather and climate files have been produced in beta testing sets for the 8 capital cities as well as a set of provincial locations sought by AIRAH in its project to manage water ingress and condensation issues in residential buildings where the precipitation data has been added as a priority to allow analysis but collaborating researchers in UNSW, UTas and the AIRAH Special Technical Group for Building Physics.

These weather and climate data files will be available for sale by the end of October. Purchasers pre-ordering files before their formal release will be rewarded with a generous discount.

Similarly, free sample 2022 weather files for your choice of capital city are also still available. To receive a single data file for the capital city of your choice, simply send an email to exemplary.energy@exemplary.com.au with the subject line containing “Free 2022 data: Request for [city] in [format]”, with [city] nominating your preferred location and [format] nominating ACDB (Australian Climate Data Bank, for the CSIRO AccuRate/Cheenath engine), EPW (EnergyPlus Weather) or TMY2.

The Exemplary Energy team strives to keep our published information relevant and engaging. Your feedback is essential to our continuing improvement, and we would appreciate your thoughts. exemplary.energy@exemplary.com.au