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In a separate companion paper, the calculation of heat conduction through multi-layered building walls and roofs was shown to be much less complicated if the outside surface temperature (or the sol-air temperature) is treated as the sum of pure sinusoids. This requires that the actual outside temperature and solar radiation be adequately approximated by a small set of sine and cosine functions of time. In this paper, we analyze actual weather data to determine whether or not such an approximation is reasonable. The following sections describe: (1) the weather data chosen for analysis, (2) three analysis techniques applied to characterize weather behavior, and (3) the results of using these techniques.

Citation: ASHRAE Transactions, Volume 87, Part 2, Cincinnati, Ohio