'Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)'
Abstract
The soil temperature near four external walls with different orientations was investigated in spring and summer. In both seasons, the soil temperature was higher in the positions closest to the buildings, suggesting that the buildings were a heat source for the soil surrounding them. Therefore, it could be confirmed that there was lateral heat transfer between the soil and the buildings. Based on this, a soil heat flux plate was set between the soil and the buildings to investigate the horizontal heat flux. The data showed diurnal variations of the horizontal heat flux in both spring and summer. In order to determine the factors that influenced the horizontal heat flux and to provide a basis to understand its mechanism, the correlations between the data of several meteorological factors and the horizontal heat flux were analysed. The results showed that solar radiation was significantly correlated with the horizontal heat flux (p0.05), such as that for soil moisture. The stepwise regression results indicated that the relative importance of these meteorological factors was 48.63, 21.94, 14.44, 8.12 and 6.87% for solar radiation, soil temperature, air temperature, relative humidity and soil moisture, respectively, on a diurnal scale
