A comparison of future weather created from morphed observed weather and created by a weather generator

To allow building scientists and engineers to investigate how their building designs fare in future climates there is the need for future weather files on an hourly timescale, which are representative of possible future climates. With the publication of the most recent UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) such data can be created for future years up to the end of the 21st century and for various predictions of climate change by one of two methods: mathematical transformations of observed weather (morphing), or the use of a synthetic weather generator. Here current and future weather is created by both of these methods for three locations within the UK and their statistical signatures discussed. Although the potential to use both products to investigate the effects of climate change is clear, it is found that the use of UKCP09 climate change anomalies within the morphing procedure give an unrealistic representations of future temperatures both mathematically and physically, limiting its use.

► Climate change adaptation can require representative hourly data of the future period.
► Two methods are investigated: mathematic transformations and from a weather generator.
► UKCP09 scenarios contain unrealistic weather under the mathematical transformations.
► Caution must be used when using mathematical transformations within future weather.