Decay of Building Facades May Increase Due to Climate Change

Building envelopes are sensitive to climate conditions. Changes to the climate conditions may alter the hygrothermal behaviour of building envelopes, and thus their performance in terms of deterioration. Therefore, it is important to assess the impact of climate change on damages in building envelopes. We performed 35.000 hygrothermal simulations of solid masonry walls over 10 locations across Europe. We included a range of parameter variations (e.g. masonry thickness, walls with/without interior insulation, brick type etc.). The climate change signal per location and damage mechanism results in a distribution, meaning that not all parameter combinations result in the same climate change signal. For example, there may be an increase in freeze-thaw damage for some parameter combinations, and a decrease for other combinations at the same location. Here, we presented the 90th percentile of the climate change signal. In this way, 90% of the cases have a smaller or negative climate change signal. Based on the results, some damage risks are projected to increase, whereas others remain constant. Furthermore, the impact of climate change is not the same for different damage mechanisms and/or locations over Europe. Especially in the north of Europe, the risk on moisture-related damages is projected to increase. The results in this study are based on one model (i.e. the REMO regional climate model), and one scenario of projected greenhouse gases (i.e. RCP 4.5). Future studies should focus on more models and scenarios