Natural convection characteristics of a partially heated open ended square cavity have been investigated numerically by using an in-house computational flow solver based on the passive scalar thermal lattice Boltzmann method (PS-TLBM) with D2Q9 (two-dimensional and nine-velocity link) lattice model. The partial part of left wall of the cavity is heated isothermally at either of the three different (bottom, middle and top) locations for the fixed heating length as half of characteristic length (H/2) while the right wall is open to the ambient conditions. The other parts of the cavity are thermally isolated. In particular, the influences of partial heating locations and Rayleigh number (103≤ Ra≤106) in the laminar zone on the local and global natural convection characteristics (such as streamline, vorticity and isotherm contours; centerline variations of velocity and temperature; and local and average Nusselt numbers) have been presented and discussed for the fixed value of the Prandtl number (Pr=0.71). The streamline patterns show qualitatively similar nature for all the three heating cases and Rayleigh numbers, except the change in the recirculation zone which is found to be largest for middle heating case. Isotherm patterns are shifted towards a partially heated wall on increasing Rayleigh number and/or shifting of heating location from bottom to top. Both the local and average Nusselt numbers, as anticipated, shown proportional increase with Rayleigh number. The cavity with middle heating location shown higher heat transfer rate than that for the top and bottom heating cases. Finally, the functional dependence of the average Nusselt number on flow governing parameters is also presented as a closure relationship for the best possible utilization in engineering practices and design. © 2015, Korean Institute of Chemical Engineers, Seoul, Korea.