A Comparison of the Effects of Climate and Human Variability on the Thermal Resistance of Clothing

We used a clothing thermal resistance model to investigate and compare the effects of climate and human variability on human thermal load. To investigate the effect of climate variability, we introduced the mean clothing thermal resistance rcl¯. For characterizing the effect of human variability, we used the standard deviation of clothing thermal resistance ∆rcl. We distinguished people based on their body type. We also defined the average human, a man and a woman, with thermal resistances of rcl,m and rcl,f. The investigation was carried out for the European region in the cold season for the period of 1981–2010. The climate variables were taken from the ERA5 reanalysis database. Our most important results are the following. (1) The macroscale pattern of the rcl¯ and ∆rcl fields are very similar, based on which it can be stated that human variability does not modify the spatial distribution of rcl¯. (2) The ∆rcl values are roughly a quarter of the rcl¯ values. The highest rcl¯ values (3.2–3.4 clo) are in Lapland, and the smallest (1–1.2 clo) in Andalusia. (3) The macroscale pattern of the rcl,m and rcl,f fields is similar to the macroscale pattern of the rcl values of the mesomorphic person rcl,2. The field of rcl,2 can be used for climate classification purposes.