Thermal stress information as a tourism-oriented climate product: Performance analysis for selected urban destinations in Romania and Italy

Abstract

The study addresses the characteristics of a climate service targeting tourists and discusses the evaluation of its products with a particular focus on the thermal stress information. Furthermore, an assessment of the impact of input data on the accuracy and relevance of the thermal stress product is presented. The thermal stress is expressed through UTCI (Universal Thermal Climate Index) and it is computed from UERRA regional reanalysis and E-OBS gridded dataset, for summer season during 2011–2018. The analysis targets 10 cities with different characteristics located in Romania and Italy. It focuses on the impact of three temperature-related input data (instantaneous temperature at 12:00 UTC, daily maximum and daily mean temperature) on the thermal stress intensity. The results show that differences up to 4 days in the pronounced thermal stress category may appear when employing daily maximum temperature compared to the use 12:00 UTC instantaneous temperature, while the use of daily mean temperature leads to strong underestimation of thermal stress in this category. The findings are of interest in defining the technical choices of products to be incorporated in a climate service for tourism in order to assure a good user uptake.

Keywords

• Thermal comfort
• Reanalysis
• Heat stress
• Climate service
• Tourism