## 3 Results and Discussion
### Indoor Operative Temperatures and Thermal Comfort Conditions  
The raising in energy consumption and the reduction in the thermal performance previously discussed is related to the tendency of the outdoor air temperature observed in the future scenarios generated by the tool CCWorldWeatherGen (Figure 7). In the base scenario, the annual average air temperature is 26.7 \({}^{\circ}\)C and in the futures, a gradual increase is caused due to global warming projections, reaching 28.5 \({}^{\circ}\)C and 29.9 \({}^{\circ}\)C in the 2020s and the 2050s, respectively. In this sense, an increase of 3.2 \({}^{\circ}\)C is predicted until the 2050s, as mentioned previously. The highest increase is observed in the dry season in September (1.9 \({}^{\circ}\)C and 4 \({}^{\circ}\)C in the 2020s and 2050s, respectively) and the lowest in the wet season in January (1.2 \({}^{\circ}\)C and 2.3 \({}^{\circ}\)C in the 2020s and 2050s, respectively). The potential global warming is more pronounced in the research region than those observed in other Brazilian cities characterized by different climates [9; 12]. This is an important issue, as dwellings in the region usually operate predominantly with natural ventilation, compromising the possibility to maintain adequate indoors thermal comfort in the warming predicted context, as is described below. The indoors operative temperatures in the house's rooms accompany the observed rise in the outdoor air temperature, progressively moving upwards in each time-slice. In the LIHe, the integrated living room/kitchen operative temperatures related to the building orientations are higher than in the bedrooms, but the differences are small, causing the curves to overlap each other (Figure 7a). This is not happening in the LIHb, where the introduction of bermed earth-sheltering walls caused thermal damping inside the bedrooms (Figure 7b). The observed modulation is an effective measure to reduce temperature fluctuations during the day; however, it can also lead to a slower reduction of the operative temperature during the night, which makes important the use of natural ventilation through the window openings during this period [8]. It is possible to notice that thermal damp is progressively reduced, due to the outdoors air temperature warming and also the raising on the ground temperature, compromising the tested measure effectiveness. Thus, for this reason, thermal comfort conditions inside the building are accessed in the sequence. The adaptation measure implemented in the LIHb is effective in improving the building thermal performance in the base scenario, increasing the comfort, and reducing hot discomfort hours inside the building (Figure 8). The west orientation is the most effective in providing the highest thermal comfort hours (82%), 12% higher than the LIHe for the same orientation. Therefore, a properly designed bioclimatic passive measure may become an alternative to improve the building's habitability for the researched location, also, in the current weather conditions. In future scenarios, thermal comfort levels have progressively deteriorated inside the houses, and the raise in the hot discomfort hours is observed in both typologies with the projections established by the IPCC. The small number of cold discomfort hours almost vanishes, due to the forecast outdoor air temperature elevation. Despite that, in the 2020 scenario, the typologies are still capable of providing more hours of thermal comfort than discomfort. Note that LIHb, on average, provides better thermal habitability for the users (59%), when compared to LIHe (51%), which is near the borderline to have a warm environment inside its rooms. The LIHe oriented to the north has higher hot discomfort hours than comfort (49%). In this sense, the impact of climate change is more pronounced in LIHe than in LIHb. Therefore, bermed earth-sheltering walls are a climate-responsive alternative design to help to improve the building's habitability.