Climate resources at United States National Parks: a tourism climate index approach

Impact of Climate Variability on Climate Beach-Based Tourism Aptitude: A Case Study in the Atlantic Coast of SW Europe

“…Those results empirically support the assertion that climate change is unequally impacting the re-distribution of climate resources dependent on climate region and specific geographical characteristics. For example, the mid-latitude region of USA experienced the largest improvement from 1981 to 2019, while just a moderate improvement or even a decline was observed in the tropical and arid climate regions [39]. A significant lengthening of the annual average tourist climate comfortable period in mainland China was also found for the 1981-2010 period [40].…”

“…The HCI: Beach has been applied to different destinations and climatic settings, to characterize both current and future conditions [34][35][36]. However, to date, the HCI: Beach index has not been used to assess its long-term variability or its links with atmospheric circulation, unlike other bioclimatic indices [37][38][39][40][41][42]. Characterizing the climate beach-based tourism aptitude on a regional-scale basis, as observed in the instrumental record, is a necessary initial step toward making meaningful assessments of the accuracy of regional climate predictions.…”

Global Climate Resources for Camping and Nature-Based Tourism

“…Travel frequency and tourism expenditure increase as temperature increases [40,41]. Observed changes in climate have already expanded camping and park operation seasons in parts of North America and north and central Europe, in some instances by over a month, due to improved spring and fall shoulder seasons [6,37,[42][43][44][45][46]. Others have raised concerns about intense heat reducing park and camping visits [38,47,48] and empirically demonstrated that the higher frequency and intensity of extreme weather (a consequence of climate change) can adversely affect camping [49].…”

“…The CCI is a data-driven tourism climate index that combines seven meteorological variables and threshold levels (e.g., extreme precipitation and temperature) that influence camping and other nature-based tourism activities [54]. The CCI has been validated at for-profit [54] and non-profit campgrounds [6] across the US. Validation efforts occurred in the United States using daily and monthly nature-based tourism data [6,54] for locations in four of the world's five major Köppen climate types (i.e., tropical, dry, temperate, continental) that occur in the USA.…”

“…The outdoor nature of such tourism and recreation activities makes them susceptible to weather, climate, and, over the course of decades, climate change. In the tourism climatology literature, meteorological variables (i.e., temperature, precipitation) that influence tourist behaviors are referred to as climate resources [6][7][8]. To inform destination management and planning, the goal of this study is to (1) document the global spatial and temporal distributions of climate resources for nature-based tourism and recreation, and (2) examine how these resources have changed over the last seven decades.…”