## 2 Methodology
### Climate Change Scenarios  
The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) [36] was released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, which used 23 models based on the third phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3). Seven years later, the IPCC released the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), but used more than 50 models to report climate projections [37], whose information was provided by the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) [38]. Figure 2: Daily mean maximum and minimum outdoor temperatures in each city (**left**) and relative humidity (**right**). The SRES scenarios are 40 in total, each scenario based on various hypotheses related to the future pollution of greenhouse gas emissions, land-uses and other driving forces. In such way, hypotheses are considered in the future technological development and the future economic development for each scenario. Scenarios are classified into families, whose scenarios have some similar aspects. The families of the scenarios used in the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports are A1 FI, A1B, A1T, A2, B1, and B2. The combination of a series of hypotheses therefore results in the variation of the climate conditions of the future scenario. Also, a series of new scenarios called RCP was developed. These scenarios are called pathways to stress that they are not definitive scenarios, but internally consistent sets of time-dependent forcing projections. They are identified by the approximate value of the RF (in W/m\({}^{2}\)) at 2100 or at stabilisation after 2100 in their extensions, relative to pre-industrial values. There are four RCP scenarios: RCP2.6 (the lowest of the four, also referred to as RCP3-PD) peaks at 3.0 W/m\({}^{2}\) and then declines to 2.6 W/m\({}^{2}\) in 2100, RCP4.5 (medium-low) and RCP6.0 (medium-high) stabilize after 2100 at 4.2 and 6.0 W/m\({}^{2}\) respectively, while RCP8.5 (the highest) reaches 8.3 W/m\({}^{2}\) in 2100 on a rising trajectory [39]. This research has considered these five scenarios: SRES A1B, A2, B1, RCP4.5, and RCP 8.5. As the first step of the study, the daily mean outdoor temperature and the average relative humidity for each location and each scenario were generated, taking as a base the available meteorological files of each city, which compile data from the period 2000-2009. As a result, new meteorological files were generated and subsequently input to EnergyPlus to calculate the energy consumption and the thermal comfort levels under each scenario (Figure 3). Daily mean maximum and minimum outdoor temperatures significantly increase in the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, as well as the daily mean maximum and minimum relative humidity decrease (Figure 3). Table 4 shows that daily mean outdoor temperatures highly increases in the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, with an average among all cities of 2.10 \({}^{\circ}\)C and 2.97 \({}^{\circ}\)C in the maximum, and 1.72 \({}^{\circ}\)C and 2.45 \({}^{\circ}\)C in the minimum, respectively, whereas A1B and A2 scenarios have an increase of 0.81 \({}^{\circ}\)C and 0.74 \({}^{\circ}\)C, and 0.81 \({}^{\circ}\)C and 0.65 \({}^{\circ}\)C, respectively. As for the B1 scenario, the average is the lowest, with 0.38 \({}^{\circ}\)C in the maximum and 0.31 \({}^{\circ}\)C in the minimum. It must be understood that the temperatures mentioned in this section and shown in Figure 3 and Table 4 represent a likely approximation of those from the years 2050, and therefore, according to the Hadley Centre Technical Note 44 [42], an uncertainty limit of \(\pm\)5% must be assumed.