Transfer of climate data for tourism applications - The Climate-Tourism/Transfer-Information-Scheme

ABSTRACTINTRODUCTION The demand and requirement of basic and easily understandable climate information leads in the development of transfer possibilities in order to apply them for different planning levels including tourism and recreation. A new approach based on climate thresholds, the Climate-Tourism/Transfer-Information-Scheme (CTIS), which is appropriate for destination analysis of present climate condi-tions and for climate changes issues is shown here, which can be applied to sustainable tourism. The presented approach integrates meteorological and tourism related components and factors. All factors are included in a scheme and can describe these factors in a high temporal resolution. CTIS integrates and simplifies climate information for tourism and recreation purposes. It contains detailed climate information which can be used by tourists to anticipate thermal conditions (including thermal comfort, cold stress, heat stress and sultriness) as well as aesthetical (sunshine) and physical con-ditions (wind, rain) when planning their vacations. CTIS provides frequency classes and frequencies of climate related information and extreme weather events on a 10-d or monthly time scale. The included factors and parameters are visualized based on thresholds. The information based on CTIS can be used for different kinds of purposes, e.g., tourism, health and urban planning. The example of Thessaloniki in Greece is shown and discussed. Visitors at vacation places and in general tourists are exposed climatic and extreme meteorological conditions and they can be affected positively or negatively [1,2]. Relevant information about climatic condition is of importance and interest; information needs to cover the variability of climate and extremes in high temporal and spatial resolution [2]. Climatic conditions and atmospheric phenomena for tourism purposes are well studied but mostly in a qualitative manner, and the quantity manner is not well investi-gated until now. Recent research is mostly focused on the quantification of strategies against climate change in tourism [3]. Knowledge of current and expected climate conditions requires interdisciplinary ap-proaches and solutions [2]. The interactions of weather and climate in tourism are well known and described before [1-5]. The recent growing attention has been paid on sustainable tourism [5]. It is known that tourism, especially summer . tourism, can be described by the triple S (sun, sea and sand). Many of the tourism factors creating the triple S are dependent on weather and climate. An additional factor that can be added to the triple S, or used as single winter S, is snow, the main decision factor for winter tourism [1,2]. Including all these factors in yearly quantification of climate for tourism is possible. The most known example of the quantification of climate information for tourism is the Tourism Climate Index (TCI). Developed by Mieczkowski [6], the TCI uses a combination of seven parameters, three of which are independent and two in a bioclimatic combi-nation. It includes a daytime comfort index, consisting of the mean maximum air temperature and the mean minimum relative humidity (RH), a daily comfort index, consisting of the mean air temperature and the mean RH, amount of precipitation, daily sunshine duration and mean wind speed. In contrast to other climate indices, every contributing parameter is assessed. Because of a weighting factor (a maximum .