Applicability of passive design strategies in China promoted under global warming in past half century

Abstract There is now a consensus on climate change, but its influence on architectural design strategies remains unclear. The applicability of passive design strategies is influenced by the comprehensive effect of outdoor meteorological conditions and indoor thermal comfort criteria. The paper focuses on the analysis of recorded climate change during the period between 1970 and 2017 for 1019 meteorological stations in China. The object was to analyze the observed change between two periods (1970–1993 and 1994–2017) in relation to the change in the applicability of four selected passive building design strategies, namely passive solar heating, natural ventilation, thermal mass with or without night ventilation and direct evaporative cooling. The methodology consists of raw data processing, TMY derivation, bioclimatic analysis and spatial results representation using ArcGIS. The applicability of natural ventilation was most affected by climate change, with effective time ratio of 54.46% locations increased for a maximum of 40%. Proportions of passive solar heating, direct evaporative cooling, and thermal mass with or without night ventilation were 59.76%, 63.10%, and 35.13%, respectively. Our results indicate that the applicability of some passive design strategies have promoted in China, with favorable impacts on the energy efficiency of buildings.