Helmut Mayer (ed.) Celebrating the 50 Years of the Meteorological Institute, Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg,

Due to results of regional climate simulations for Central Europe, the likelihood is very high that not only the near-surface air temperature is increasing but also an intensification of extreme heat waves in summer will occur. The change of the large-scale thermal background conditions is strengthened in cities by their specific urban climate. Against this background, the demand for human-biometeorologically based concepts is continuously increasing in town planning, by which the stronger impairments of human thermal comfort for citizens in the future can be minimised. A comprehensive analysis of human thermal comfort within cities during large-scale heat conditions requires a coordinated combination of different methods: (i) experimental inves-tigations and numerical simulations to calculate comfort-relevant thermal assessment indices, (ii) questionnaires with respect to the individual perception of the local thermal environment and (iii) monitoring of behaviour patterns of citizens in urban open spaces. The general objective of the BMBF joint research project KLIMES is the development of ur-banistic concepts to mitigate the impacts of extreme heat on citizens. The fundamentals are worked out in four KLIMES subprojects. Within the scope of the subproject KLIMES ALUF-2, experimental investigations on human thermal comfort in different urban quarters in Freiburg, the warmest city in Germany, are conducted on typical summer days. The internationally used physiologically equivalent temperature is applied as thermo-physiologically significant assess-ment index. The investigation design as well as exemplary results obtained for the selected site “Rieselfeld ” are presented and discussed. KLIMES – ein Verbundprojekt zum thermischen Komfort für Menschen in Städte