Sustainability
Cooling Degree Days
Description: Degree days estimate the amount of heating and cooling needed to maintain a comfortable interior environment. Hot days, which may require energy for cooling, are measured in cooling degree days. Cold days are measured in heating degree days. The Phoenix metropolitan region has few, if any, heating degree days for June. In order to calculate cooling degree days, a reference temperature of 65°F is subtracted from the daily mean. The graph shows the sum of the differences between the daily mean temperatures in the month of June and 65°F for years 1948 through 2007.
An increase in the number of cooling degree days leads to increased energy demand used to cool building interiors. With higher energy costs in the summer, this has an economic impact. With increases in minimum temperatures, energy demand further increases with almost continuous running of air conditioning units.
Data Source: Data collected by Arizona State University's Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC) using records from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center, Satellite and Information Service, Integrated Surface Hourly Data, Current Temperature for the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport climate monitoring station. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/climatedata.html#hourly
Comments on the Quality of the Data: None.
