Research Article

ThermoZone-TR: an explainable ERA5-Land degree-day framework for reassessing Türkiye’s TS 825 building climate zones

Volume: 17 Number: 3 October 18, 2026
TR EN

ThermoZone-TR: an explainable ERA5-Land degree-day framework for reassessing Türkiye’s TS 825 building climate zones

Abstract

Türkiye’s thermal insulation standard, TS 825, was reissued in its 2024 edition with six climate zones and, for the first time, a cooling component, and it has governed all new building permits since April 2025. The zones are assigned at province level from station records averaged over 1992–2021, which leaves two questions open: how much climate variation a single provincial class conceals, and how quickly a fixed window falls behind a warming climate. This study introduces ThermoZone-TR, a framework that recomputes the zoning from the ERA5-Land reanalysis over 1950–2025 at 0.1° resolution and evaluates it against 134 surface stations without statistical correction. Because no accessible source states the base temperatures behind the official thresholds, they were inferred from the data; heating base 18 °C with cooling base 22 °C reproduces the official 81-province assignment best, with 74% exact agreement and 94% of provinces within one zone. On average only 41% of a province’s area lies in its official zone, and discordance reaches three zones over the coastal mountain belts. National heating degree-days fell by 52.6 °C-day per decade over the record while cooling degree-days rose by 12.6 °C-day per decade, and 19% of the national territory, together with 163 of 891 districts, shifts toward warmer zones when the standard’s window is replaced by the most recent fifteen years. A physiographic random-forest surrogate with Shapley additive explanation (SHAP) attribution reproduces the zone map with 87.9% spatially blocked accuracy and identifies elevation as the dominant control, supporting zone boundaries drawn at district or grid scale in future revisions.

Keywords

Supporting Institution

Hakkari University

Project Number

FM19BAP

Ethical Statement

There is no need to obtain permission from the ethics committee for the article prepared; the study uses only openly available climate and administrative datasets. There is no conflict of interest with any person or institution in the article prepared. During the preparation of this article, the author used the AI assistant Claude (Anthropic) to support analysis scripting, language editing and drafting under the author's direction. All scientific decisions, analyses, results and conclusions were reviewed and verified by the author, who takes full responsibility for the content of the article.

Thanks

This work was supported by the Scientific Research Projects Coordination Office of Hakkari University, Türkiye (Project No. FM19BAP). The author thanks the Copernicus Climate Change Service for the ERA5-Land reanalysis, the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information for the GSOD station records, and the GADM project for the administrative boundary data.

References

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Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

Civil Engineering (Other)

Journal Section

Research Article

Publication Date

October 18, 2026

Submission Date

August 1, 2026

Acceptance Date

September 14, 2026

Published in Issue

Year 2026 Volume: 17 Number: 3

APA
Gül, E. (2026). ThermoZone-TR: an explainable ERA5-Land degree-day framework for reassessing Türkiye’s TS 825 building climate zones. Dicle Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi Mühendislik Dergisi, 17(3). https://doi.org/10.24012/dumf.2009017
AMA
1.Gül E. ThermoZone-TR: an explainable ERA5-Land degree-day framework for reassessing Türkiye’s TS 825 building climate zones. DUJE. 2026;17(3). doi:10.24012/dumf.2009017
Chicago
Gül, Ertuğrul. 2026. “ThermoZone-TR: An Explainable ERA5-Land Degree-Day Framework for Reassessing Türkiye’s TS 825 Building Climate Zones”. Dicle Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi Mühendislik Dergisi 17 (3). https://doi.org/10.24012/dumf.2009017.
EndNote
Gül E (October 1, 2026) ThermoZone-TR: an explainable ERA5-Land degree-day framework for reassessing Türkiye’s TS 825 building climate zones. Dicle Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi Mühendislik Dergisi 17 3
IEEE
[1]E. Gül, “ThermoZone-TR: an explainable ERA5-Land degree-day framework for reassessing Türkiye’s TS 825 building climate zones”, DUJE, vol. 17, no. 3, Oct. 2026, doi: 10.24012/dumf.2009017.
ISNAD
Gül, Ertuğrul. “ThermoZone-TR: An Explainable ERA5-Land Degree-Day Framework for Reassessing Türkiye’s TS 825 Building Climate Zones”. Dicle Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi Mühendislik Dergisi 17/3 (October 1, 2026). https://doi.org/10.24012/dumf.2009017.
JAMA
1.Gül E. ThermoZone-TR: an explainable ERA5-Land degree-day framework for reassessing Türkiye’s TS 825 building climate zones. DUJE. 2026;17. doi:10.24012/dumf.2009017.
MLA
Gül, Ertuğrul. “ThermoZone-TR: An Explainable ERA5-Land Degree-Day Framework for Reassessing Türkiye’s TS 825 Building Climate Zones”. Dicle Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi Mühendislik Dergisi, vol. 17, no. 3, Oct. 2026, doi:10.24012/dumf.2009017.
Vancouver
1.Ertuğrul Gül. ThermoZone-TR: an explainable ERA5-Land degree-day framework for reassessing Türkiye’s TS 825 building climate zones. DUJE. 2026 Oct. 1;17(3). doi:10.24012/dumf.2009017