Insights into technical challenges in the field of microplastic pollution through the lens of early career researchers (ECRs) and a proposed pathway forward

Early career researchers (ECR) face a series of challenges related to the inherent difficulties of starting their careers. Microplastic (MP) research is a topical field attracting high numbers of ECRs with diverse backgrounds and expertise from a wealth of disciplines including environmental science, biology, chemistry and ecotoxicology. In this perspective the challenges that could hinder scientific, professional, or personal development are explored, as identified by an international network of ECRs, all employed in MP research, that was formed following a bilateral workshop for scientists based in the UK and China. Discussions amongst the network were grouped into four overarching themes of technical challenges: in the field, in the laboratory, in the post data collection phase, and miscellaneous. The three key areas of representativeness, access to appropriate resources, training, and clean labs, and the use of databases and comparability, as well as the overarching constraint of available time were identified as the source of the majority of challenges. A set of recommendations for pathways forward are proposed based on the principles of research openness, access to information and training, and widening collaborations. ECRs have great capacity to promote research excellence in the field of MPs and elsewhere, when provided with appropriate opportunities and suitable support

Quantifying the effects of climate change and risk level on peak load design in buildings

Good building design aims to balance providing a comfortable internal environment for as much of the time as possible within a variety of constraints. An important factor is the expected weather, but in a changing climate this poses additional challenges to engineers and architects. This paper examines the effects of increased external temperature on the size of the central air conditioning and heating plant for an example building. It is found that for each 1°C rise in external temperatures, the peak cooling load increases approximately by 10%, the chiller power by 14% and fan power for distribution by 30-50%. These are relatively large increases in power needed to counteract rising external temperature and the paper considers the choice of risk level for sizing building plant. From HadRM3 data, the future frequency distribution of higher external temperatures is examined to evaluate the effects on plant size of designing to a fixed percentile of risk. Projected changes in absolute humidity are also discussed. Practical applications: Climate change is an important topic for building services engineers, resulting in the UK in the new, performance-based Building Regulations Part L. New, future weather data will also become available with different climate change scenarios. This paper examines the implications of both climate change and the risk level on the peak load for natural ventilation or air conditioning and heating that is used in the design of systems

Constructing a future weather file for use in building simulation using UKCIP CP09 projections

In the future with climate change, building designers may need to demonstrate to clients that their buildings will continue to provide a comfortable environment under future weather conditions. Building simulation modelling can be used to this end provided that suitable weather files can be constructed. This article describes the use of the latest climate projections from UKCIP (UKCP09 data) and a method of constructing an hourly weather file for the following parameters: dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity, cloud cover, solar irradiation (direct and diffuse), wind speed and wind direction. For a given future scenario, the approach used first selects appropriate months from 3000 years of UKCP09 data to construct a Test Reference Year (TRY). Unfortunately, the UKCP09 hourly data has no wind or cloud data, and the solar irradiance is uncorrected at low sun angles. This article describes algorithms for calculating wind speed and cloud cover from the UKCP09 data. From this data, a TRY can be constructed and formatted to be suitable for use with commonly used simulation packages. Practical applications: Building professionals increasingly seek reassurance on how a proposed building will perform under a future rather than historical climate. This article describes a method of processing the latest future climate projections (UKCP09 data released in June 2009) and generating a Test Reference Year (TRY) with the full complement of weather parameters suitable for use by commonly used building simulation programmes

The Design Reference Year – a new approach to testing a building in more extreme weather using UKCP09 projections

Current practice in building design is to assess a building’s performance using average or typical weather, a test reference year (TRY), and then to see how it performs when ‘stressed’, using a design summer year (DSY). The DSY is an actual year of hourly data which has the third warmest summer in 20 years’ summers. One of the problems with the DSY method is that it does not explicitly take into account solar radiation, or humidity, nor when more extreme weather occurs – it is selected solely on the mean six monthly temperature from April to September. A DSY may actually be cloudier than the average weather of a TRY. This article proposes an alternative approach using a new type of design reference year (DRY) consisting of a year formed from individual more extreme weather months. The DRY is used in simulating the performance of a building and to identify a single critical month for over-heating, or maximum cooling load. This article compares the characteristics of the DSY and proposed DRY using future projected weather data from UKCIP. Practical applications : Building designers are increasingly required by their clients to demonstrate how a proposed building will perform under a future rather than historical climate. This article describes a method of processing the latest future climate projections (UK Climate Impacts Programme’s (UKCIP’s) CP09 data released in June 2009) and generating a design reference year (DRY) for use in building simulation programmes. The DRY is proposed as a replacement for the design summer year (DSY), which has a number of limitations