The most problematic variable in the course of human-biometeorological comfort assessment - the mean radiant temperature

This paper gives a review on the topic of the mean radiant temperature T mrt, the most important parameter influencing outdoor thermal comfort during sunny conditions. T mrt summarizes all short wave and long wave radiation fluxes reaching the human body, which can be very complex (variable in spatial and also in temporal manner) in urban settings. Thermal comfort researchers and urban planners need easy and sound methodological approaches to assess T mrt . After the basics of the T mrt calculation some of the methods suitable for obtaining T mrt also in urban environments will be presented.. Two of the discussed methods are based on instruments which measure the radiation fluxes integral (globe thermometer, pyranometer-pyrgeometer combination), and three of the methods are based on modelling the radiation environment with PC software (RayMan, ENVI-met and SOLWEIG). © 2011 Versita Warsaw and Springer-Verlag Wien