Nonlinear black-box models for short-term forecasting of air temperature in the town of Palermo

Weather data are crucial to correctly design buildings and their heatingand cooling systems and to assess their energy performances. In the intenselyurbanized towns the effect of climatic parameters is further emphasized bythe “ urban heat island” (UHI) phenomenon, known as the increase in the airtemperature of urban areas, compared to the one measured in the extra-urbanareas. The analysis of the heat island needs detailed local climate data which canbe collected only by a dedicated weather monitoring system. The Department ofEnergy and Environmental Researches of the University of Palermo (Italy) hasbuilt up a weather monitoring system that works 24 hours per day and makes dataavailable in real-time at the web site: www.dream.unipa.it/meteo. The datacollected by the system have been used to implement a set of nonlinear black-boxmodels aiming to obtain short-term forecasts of the air temperature and map themover the monitored area. By using the data recorded during the 2008 summer,the daily profiles of the hourly average temperature have been plotted for eachweather station of the monitoring system, thus clearly highlighting the temperaturedifferences between the urban and extra-urban area and the average intensity ofthe UHI of Palermo.