Weather and indoor climate in Greenland

To make a hygrothermal assessment of a building construction, e.g. wall or roof, weather files as well as information on indoor moisture load are needed, however only to some extent available for Greenlandic conditions. This paper describes a project that had a twofold aim: 1) create weather files for four different cities in Greenland in a simple way, 2) determine the typical moisture load in a Greenlandic dwelling to see if the international standard ISO 13788 is applicable in Greenland when describing indoor moisture load.

The four chosen cities are placed at the west coast of Greenland. Hourly weather data of 10 years for the four cities were obtained from the meteorological institutes of Denmark and Greenland, from this a reference year with hourly values was created for each city. The paper also describes how incomplete data was treated.

Five dwellings were chosen in each city to assess the indoor moisture load. Temperature and relative humidity were measured hourly in living rooms of these dwellings. Furthermore, outdoor temperature and relative humidity were measured in the four cities. The moisture load in the dwellings were scattered in humidity class 1-4, similar to what has been measured in Danish dwellings, consequently ISO 13788 may be applicable in Greenland.