Analysis of the Change of Comfort Index over Yunnan Province Based on Effective Temperature

The Effective Temperature (ET), which considers the aggregate effects of temperature, relative humidity and wind speed to describe the human thermal sensitivity, was employed to investigate the change of thermal conditions over Yunnan Province in China during the period of 1961-2014. The observation data used in the study is the high resolution gridded daily scale dataset CN05.1. The results show that over the northern part of the Province with high elevation mountains, colder temperature, lower relative humidity and stronger wind speed prevail, which leads to the lower ET values there. Opposite conditions are found over the low elevation areas in the south. An overall warming and decrease of both relative humidity and wind speed are observed in the latest decades in the whole Province, resulting in the general increase of ET over the region. Analysis based on the different assessment scales of ET shows that, more cold/extreme cold days and cool days exist in the north, while the cool days and comfortable days are mainly distributed in the south. General decrease of cold/extreme cold days is found over the region. An increase of the cool days in the north and decrease of it in the south, significant increase of the comfortable days, and increase of warm and hot/extreme hot days over portions in the south are reported. More climatic favorable days are found in all of the four seasons. Within the climate change context, the significant reduction of cold/extreme cold days and increase of climatic favorable days indicate that the climate in Yunnan Province so far tends to be more favorable for the human beings.