Recreation climate assessment

Abstract

The study examines methods for assessing the atmospheric resource component of recreation environments. Beach use is selected as it is a highly weather sensitive recreational activity. The study area is King's Beach in Queensland, Australia. The nature of the relationship between beach climate and the enjoyment of recreational pursuits is taken to be a function of thermal, physical, and aesthetic components of the atmospheric environment. A body-atmosphere heat-budget model is used to integrate and isolate the thermal component of beach weather and enable identification of important nonthermal recreational resource attributes of the atmosphere. Beach-user sensory perception of on-site atmospheric conditions expressed verbally is used to assess the physical and aesthetic components of the atmospheric environment. The immediate thermal environment of the beach user is the main contributing factor to assessments of the desirability of on-site meteorological conditions, followed by the non-thermal effects of cloud and wind. Rainfall events of half-hour duration or longer have an overriding effect.

The Effect of Seasonal Climatic Anomalies on Zoo Visitation in Toronto (Canada) and the Implications for Projected Climate Change

“…For example, when studies analysed daily weather and attendance data, total precipitation was found to be a highly significant predictor variable [9,12,27]. These modelling approach studies therefore reported results which were in line with the contentions of de Freitas [42][43][44][45][46], emphasising the over-riding effect that the physical component of tourism climate has on visitor satisfaction and behaviour. However, when working with aggregated data, such as monthly, seasonal, or annual averages, the statistical relationship between temperature and participation becomes more emphasised; while other important climatic variables no longer appear significant.…”

Investigation of climate change impacts on tourism climate comfort in Iran

“…The specifications of weather and climate are not necessarily good determinates for tourism but they do establish an important factor in both financial terms, for tourism operators and tourists' experiences. Several attempts have been made to identify optimal climate conditions for tourism in general and for specific tourism activities (Mieczkowski, 1985;de Freitas, 1990;Lise and Tol, 2002;Bigano et al, 2006). Tourism climate comfort and its effect on tourists' health and activities are highly dependent on climate conditions.…”

Future climate resources for tourism in Europe based on the daily Tourism Climatic Index

“…Another limitation is that the TCI implicitly assumes that the different facets are independent of each other. However, this does not hold true: de Freitas (1990) has shown that for beach use, rainfall events override all other aspects. A new generation of climate indices for tourism is now being developed that address this shortcoming by designing the index to integrate overriding effects ).…”