Weather suitability for outdoor tourism in three European regions in first decades of the twenty-first century

Abstract

Outdoor tourism and recreational activities strongly depend on actual meteorological conditions. Traditionally, in three studied regions, the peak of tourists' streams concentrates in summer months. In the present study, we assess suitability of weather conditions for various forms of outdoor tourism in different regions of Serbia, Poland and Ukraine. Additionally, how the location of the station differentiates temporal patterns of weather suitability will be discussed. To analyse the suitability of weather conditions for various forms of outdoor recreation, we have chosen 23 meteorological stations of the national weather networks which represent different tourism areas and destinations. For each weather station, daily data for the period 2000-2017 of air temperature, relative humidity, total cloud cover and wind speed (at 10 m above ground) for 12 UTC as well as the daily maximum and minimum temperature, precipitation totals and snow cover depth were applied. Suitability of climate for outdoor recreation and tourism is assessed by the Weather Suitability Index (WSI) based on Błażejczyk's bio-thermal weather classification. The results of research show that passive forms of recreation (sun and air bathing) are preferred mostly in months from May till August or September. For the active forms of recreation, weather in summer months is very oppressive, especially in the resorts located in the south (Serbia, southern Ukraine). Active forms of recreation are preferred there in autumn, winter and spring months.

The evaluation of biothermal conditions for various forms of climatic therapy based on UTCI adjusted for activity

“…3), thermoneutral ('no thermal stress') conditions were observed in the analysed locations only in the cool half of the year, on 7-11% of days in the year. This was in contrast to the conclusions of Błażejczyk et al (2020), who found weather in Poland from September to April to be very suitable for active recreation in an analysis applying the Weather Suitability Index (WSI). This metric includes components related to thermal sensation, but also elements of the weather (precipitation, snow cover), which determine the attractiveness of particular atmospheric conditions for tourists (Błażejczyk, 2007;Błażejczyk & Matzarakis, 2007;Błażejczyk & Kunert, 2011), and thus differs from the UTCI approach, which focusses on the thermal strain of the human organism.…”

Thermal stress in selected mountain system in Central and Eastern Europe – initial research based on UTCI characteristics

“…with reduced risk of organism overheating involved by great metabolism. On the other hand cold stress at elevated locations, accelerated by strong winds, is unsuitable for passive recreation forms like sun and air bathing (Błażejczyk & Sitek, 2003;Miszuk et al, 2016;Błażejczyk et al, 2020).…”

“…The authors have reported an influence of geographical location (longitude and latitude) on bioclimatic features of studied cities. Recently, Błażejczyk et al (2020) have compared the suitability of bioclimatic weather features for outdoor tourism in three European countries: Poland, Serbia and Ukraine. While general features of climate (e.g.…”

Assessment of Outdoor Thermal Comfort in Serbia’s Urban Environments during Different Seasons

“…[18]. Therefore, the issue of OTC in urban areas has become the subject of the numerous studies over the past two decades [1,2,11,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29].…”

“…The results of different bioclimatic and biometeorological studies have proven the great applicability of this method in the assessment of urban OTC. For instance, the UTCI has been applied for these purposes worldwide, e.g., Canada [23,33], Brazil [34,35], Australia [32], India [36], China [32,37,38], South Korea [33], Iran [39,40], Saudi Arabia [19], Russia [23], Greece [1,41], Czech Republic [42], Poland [17], France [43], other European regions [20,44,45], etc.…”