In this study, we evaluated the thermal environments of different tennis courts using wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) meters. WBGT meters were installed in an outdoor hard court, sand-filled artificial grass court, and clay court (a softball field), and measurements were taken hourly from 9:00 to 17:00 on weekdays from June 1 to September 21, 2022. The results were compared with data from different courts and the nearest Japan Meteorological Agency station (JMA WBGT) based on the Japan Sports Association\'s guidelines for exercise to prevent heat stroke. The median WBGT on each court was significantly higher for hard courts at the \"Warning\" (25 ≤ JMA WBGT < 28) level or above, sand-filled artificial grass courts at the \"Severe Warning\" (28 ≤ JMA WBGT < 31) level or above, and clay courts at the \"Danger\" (31 ≤ JMA WBGT) level than the JMA WBGT. Compared with the JMA WBGT, hard and sand-filled artificial grass courts are played on under particularly hot conditions. The results of this study could indicate to tournament organizers and coaches the importance of measuring the WBGT on each court surface from an early stage to prevent heat-related incidents.

Extreme weather conditions, like heatwave events, are becoming more frequent with climate change. Animals often modify their behaviour to cope with environmental changes and extremes. During heat stress conditions, individuals change their spatial behaviour and increase the use of shaded areas to assist with thermoregulation. Here, we suggest that for social species, these behavioural changes and ambient conditions have the potential to influence an individual\'s position in its social network, and the social network structure as a whole. We investigated whether heat stress conditions (quantified through the temperature humidity index) and the resulting use of shaded areas, influence the social network structure and an individual\'s connectivity in it. We studied this in free-ranging sheep in the arid zone of Australia, GPS-tracking all 48 individuals in a flock. When heat stress conditions worsened, individuals spent more time in the shade and the network was more connected (higher density) and less structured (lower modularity). Furthermore, we then identified the behavioural change that drove the altered network structure and showed that an individual\'s shade use behaviour affected its social connectivity. Interestingly, individuals with intermediate shade use were most strongly connected (degree, strength, betweenness), indicating their importance for the connectivity of the social network during heat stress conditions. Heat stress conditions, which are predicted to increase in severity and frequency due to climate change, influence resource use within the ecological environment. Importantly, our study shows that these heat stress conditions also affect the animal\'s social environment through the changed social network structure. Ultimately, this could have further flow on effects for social foraging and individual health since social structure drives information and disease transmission.

In the resource-constrained South African education sector, infrastructure considered temporary or a backup in other countries is used as permanent classrooms, primarily but not exclusively in lower-income areas. Children\'s cognitive performance and comfort are directly impacted by indoor air quality. Temperature, relative humidity, particulate matter and CO2 levels, substantial determinants of air quality and thermal comfort, have not been investigated across different classroom building and infrastructure types. We measure these parameters with 11-min intervals in 24 classrooms at schools in Stellenbosch, South Africa. These classrooms consist of a range of different infrastructure types. Container classrooms with and without insulation, mobile (prefabricated) classrooms, and brick classrooms of different configurations are included. Measurements are concurrently sampled over ten months (249 days, still ongoing) across multiple seasons with relevant metadata, including ambient weather conditions, school days and times, and electricity availability in the (South) African context, which impacts air conditioning usage. This dataset provides valuable insights into true learning conditions in South African classrooms.

Due to energy constraints and people\'s increasing requirements for indoor thermal comfort, improving energy efficiency while ensuring thermal comfort has become the focus of research in the design and operation of HVAC systems. This study took office rooms with few people occupying them in Wuhan as the research object. The EnergyPlus-Fluent co-simulation method was used to study the impact of 12 forms of air distribution on the thermal environment and air-conditioner energy consumption. The results indicate that 3 m/s supply air velocity and 45° supply air angle are more suitable for the case model in this study. The EnergyPlus-Fluent co-simulation method used in this paper provides a reference for the study of indoor environments in offices with few people occupying them.

The thermal environment is a crucial part of ecological environments. It is vital to study the distribution and generation of thermal environments for regional sustainable development. Mining area, agricultural area and urban area were taken as the research object, and remote sensing data were used to study the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of the thermal environment. The relationship between the thermal environment and land use types was analyzed, and the effect of mining and reclamation on the thermal environment was emphasized. The main findings were: (1) the thermal effect zone in the study area was dispersed. The area ratio of the thermal effect zone accounted for 69.70%, 68.52%, 65.85%, 74.20% and 74.66% in the year 2000, 2003, 2009, 2013 and 2018, respectively. The contribution to the overall thermal effect was in the order of agricultural area > mining area > urban area. (2) The proportion of forest and the average grid temperature always showed a significant negative correlation in different scales and had the highest correlation and the greatest influence. (3) The land surface temperature (LST) of opencast areas was higher than the surrounding temperature, and the temperature difference was 3-5 °C. The LST of reclaimed sites was lower than the surrounding temperature, and the temperature difference was -7 to 0 °C. The quantitative study found that reclamation mode, shape and spatial location could affect the cooling effect of the reclaimed site. This study can provide a reference for the mitigation of thermal effects and the identification of influences of mining and reclamation on the thermal environment in the coordinated development of similar regions.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in early 2020 reduced human outdoor activities and changed the spatial-temporal distribution of the population. To find its changes on the impact of urban thermal environment, we applied Pearson correlation analysis and OLS linear regression model from the perspective of urban land use and the local climate zone (LCZ) scheme, and selected Wuhan City in China as a case study. The results showed that the population size decreased in most urban land use and LCZ classes due to the Spring Festival and epidemic effects, which caused residents to leave Wuhan City. As a result, the normalized surface urban heat island changes (SUHInc) decreased by 9.41% at the city level, and a larger SUHInc occurred in commercial and industrial land. Among the LCZ classes, the built-up classes also tended to have a larger SUHInc than the natural land cover classes. However, the population size and human outdoor activity changes did not modify the spatial distribution of the urban thermal environment, because the same trends were observed for various urban land use and LCZ classes, which illustrated that the contribution of anthropogenic heat discharge on the urban thermal environment is relatively weaker. The above findings imply that it is necessary to apply different methods for various urban land uses and alleviate urban heat island.

Infants have a low capacity to thermally adapt to their environment and so sufficient consideration must be given to their thermal environment. In investigating an infant\'s thermal environment, the purpose of this study is to clarify the heat transfer coefficient in natural convection for the posture of an infant in a stroller. The heat transfer coefficients were measured by means of using a thermal manikin. The experimental thermal environment conditions were set for eight cases, at: 16 °C, 18 °C, 20 °C, 22 °C, 24 °C, 26 °C, 28 °C, and 30 °C, and the air and wall surface temperatures were equalized, creating a homogeneous thermal environment. The air velocity (less than 0.2 m/s) and relative humidity (50%RH) were the same for each case. The surface temperature of each part of the thermal manikin was controlled to 34 °C. The difference between the mean surface temperature and air temperature (ΔT [K]) is the driving force for the heat transfer coefficient in natural convection for the posture of an infant in a stroller (hc [W/(m2·K)]). We propose the use of the empirical formula hc = 2.16 ΔT 0 .23. The formula of the convective heat transfer coefficient in natural convection of this study can be applied to infants up to about 3 years old.

With the outbreak of infectious diseases such as Corona Virus Disease 2019, medical staff work intensively in isolated plots, medical disposable protective clothing (MDPC) has poor air condition and humidity permeability, which seriously reduces the thermal comfort of medical staff. In this paper, the effect of indoor thermal environment and activity levels on thermal comfort inside MDPC was studied by experiment. Five parts of the body were measured inside MDPC and the appropriate movements were chosen to simulate different levels of labor intensity. Meanwhile, physiological parameters and subjective thermal sensation were statistically analyzed. The results showed the influence range of different indoor temperatures on the temperature and humidity inside MDPC was about 1 °C and 10 %, respectively; it indicated that the environment inside MDPC could be improved by reducing indoor temperature, that is, a cross intelligent adjustment mode was proposed. The effect of labor intensity on the temperature inside MDPC was significantly less than that of humidity. Within 20 min, the humidity changes under moderate and heavy labor intensity were even more than 10 %, and the subjective discomfort threshold of the subjects increased by nearly 50 %. Furthermore, the maximum benefit could be obtained by concentrating cooling on back, forehead, chest and upper arm. Theoretical models of working time, labor intensity, and temperature and humidity inside MDPC under different indoor temperatures and different parts were given. In addition, acceptable regions inside MDPC which were approximately parallelogram in the enthalpy-humidity chart. These conclusions could be a reference for future thermal comfort inside MDPC research.

The cooling degree days (CDDs) can indicate the hot climatic impacts on energy consumption and thermal environment comfort effectively. Nevertheless, seldom studies focused on the spatiotemporal characteristics, influence factors, and simulation of global CDDs. This study analyzed the spatial-temporal characteristics of global CDDs from 1970 to 2018 and in the future, explored five determinants, and simulated CDDs and their interannual changing rates. The results showed that the global CDDs were generally higher at lower latitudes and altitudes. Many places experienced significant positive changes of CDDs (p < 0.05), and the rates became larger at lower latitudes and attitudes. In the future, most CDDs had the sustainability trends. Besides, significant negative partial correlations existed between not only CDDs but also their variation rates with latitude, altitude, and average enhanced vegetation index in the summer, while positive with the annual PM2.5, distance to large waterbodies (p = 0.000). Moreover, the values and variation rates of CDDs can be deduced using the generalized regression neural network method. The root-mean-square errors were 231.73 °C * days and 1.71 °C * days * year-1, respectively. These conclusions were helpful for the energy-saving for cooling with the climate change and optimization of thermal environment.

The dispersion of the coronavirus pandemic has caused immense damage worldwide, and people have begun to ruminate epidemic prevention strategies for public places. Airport terminals with a high number of occupied passengers have become potentially high-risk regions for aerosol transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In this study, the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach and realizable k-ε turbulence model were used to numerically simulate airflow organization and aerosol transmission when passengers are moving slowly in a line. During the aerosol transmission period, evaporation was considered a key factor influencing the particle size distribution at the beginning of aerosol transmission from humans. Moreover, passenger movement at the airport terminal was attained by employing dynamic mesh algorithms. Based on the relative direction of passengers and air vents when queuing in the terminal building, we studied three conditions: windward walking, leeward walking, and crosswind walking. The results of this study showed that the walking has an important influence on droplet distribution. Droplet distribution indicates that individuals standing behind patients during queuing movements have a higher risk of infection than those standing in front of them. A significant aerosol accumulation was discovered at 0.5 m behind the patient when passengers moved simultaneously. An aerosol transmission distance of 15 s aligned with the passenger\'s walking direction could reach up to 9.32 m. Furthermore, although the evaporation time of the large droplets was longer than that of the small droplets, both large and small droplets evaporated rapidly after exhalation. The crosswind influence caused the droplets to travel farther away in a direction perpendicular to human movement, which increased the distance by approximately 1.26 m compared to the absence of the crosswind influence.