Building Climate Zones

The numbers used in the climate zone map don't have a title or legend. The California climate zones shown in this map are not the same as what we commonly call climate areas such as "desert" or "alpine" climates. The climate zones are based on energy use, temperature, weather and other factors.This is explained in the Title 24 energy efficiency standards glossary section:"The Energy Commission established 16 climate zones that represent a geographic area for which an energy budget is established. These energy budgets are the basis for the standards...." "(An) energy budget is the maximum amount of energy that a building, or portion of a building...can be designed to consume per year.""The Energy Commission originally developed weather data for each climate zone by using unmodified (but error-screened) data for a representative city and weather year (representative months from various years). The Energy Commission analyzed weather data from weather stations selected for (1) reliability of data, (2) currency of data, (3) proximity to population centers, and (4) non-duplication of stations within a climate zone."Using this information, they created representative temperature data for each zone. The remainder of the weather data for each zone is still that of the representative city." The representative city for each climate zone (CZ) is:CZ 1: ArcataCZ 2: Santa RosaCZ 3: OaklandCZ 4: San Jose-ReidCZ 5: Santa MariaCZ 6: TorranceCZ 7: San Diego-LindberghCZ 8: FullertonCZ 9: Burbank-GlendaleCZ10: RiversideCZ11: Red BluffCZ12: SacramentoCZ13: FresnoCZ14: PalmdaleCZ15: Palm Spring-IntlCZ16: Blue CanyonThe original detailed survey definitions of the 16 Climate Zones are found in the 1995 publication, California Climate Zone Descriptions for New Buildings For more information regarding the climate zone map, please refer to the Title 24 Standards or contact the Title 24 Energy Efficiency Standards Hotline at:E-mail: title24@energy.ca.gov916-654-5106 800-772-3300 (toll free in California)