Residential buildings’ thermal performance and comfort for the elderly under climate changes context in the city of São Paulo, Brazil

• Study of residential units thermal performance under climate changes contexts.
• Application of adaptive thermal comfort indexes.
• Construction of weather files representing different climate change scenarios.
• Change in dwelling comfort conditions under climate change.

The subject of this paper is the residential buildings’ thermal performance and comfort in the city of São Paulo, taking into account the climate changes and the greater vulnerability of the elderly related to the environmental conditions. The aim is the evaluation of thermal performance and comfort in residential buildings under the RCP 8.5 scenario from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, as well as under the heat wave occurred in January and February 2014.This study is based on real case studies and computer simulations carried out using EDSL TAS. Three elderly dwellings were surveyed and monitored aiming the comparison between measurements and computer simulation to calibrate the models. For the computer simulations, simulated and measured climate data were employed.Results were analyzed comparing comfort conditions in the different climate scenarios and among the case studies, following two adaptive comfort indexes selected for this study.Analysis revealed a tendency of change in comfort conditions following the progression of the climate scenarios, showing an increase in heat sensation and a decrease in cold sensation. The results show that the combination of both phenomena, climate change and heat wave, may lead to a potential effect of heat discomfort.