Performance of an adsorption cooling system driven by solar thermal energy was studied under different climatic conditions. The effects of solar collector area, collector slope, hot water temperature and flow rate on the system performance were investigated using the real-time weather data of two cities: Perth, Australia (a representative city in the southern hemisphere) and Amman, Jordan (a representative city in the northern hemisphere). The simulation results showed that the two cities had similar solar radiation during the summer period and that the solar adsorption chiller could reliably provide cooling at a reasonably high system COP. For residential cooling with a total CPC (Compound Parabolic Collector) solar collector area of 36.22 m(2), the average system COP was 0.491 for Perth weather conditions and 0.467 for Amman weather conditions, respectively while the cooling capacity was 10.3 kW for Perth and 8.46 kW for Amman, respectively at peak times. Optimum performance occurred when the system run with the CPC collector slope of around 30, the solar water storage tank volume of 1.4 m(3), inlet hot water temperature of 80 degrees C, and a hot water flow rate of 0.33 kg/s. An economic analysis was further investigated and the results showed that the solar driven adsorption cooling system could reduce the electricity consumption for Perth and Amman cities by 34% and 28%, respectively in comparison to a conventional vapour compression cooling system. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.