Abstract

soil in shallow depths could be used as heat sink / heat source for cooling / heating devices. To predict its thermal behaviour during year, some authors use data from soil temperature records some else use data from average yearly air temperature measurements of meteorologic stations to avoid measure soil temperature in shallow depths for long time. In this research paper, we present a comparison study about the use of soil data and the use of air data for soil temperature prediction, where transient heat conduction in semi-infinite solids is utilised in the study. We measured the soil temperature of three sites for three years in Covilha -Portugal to support the current study. Later, we create reference years of soil temperature in the three sites.