Spatial Pattern And Evolution Of Tourism Climate Comfortableness Degree In Mainland China

Tourism climate comfort is an index combining important meteorological elements, such as temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, sunshine, wind and other meteorological elements. The index is used to judge tourism climate of tourism destination. Tourism climate affects tourist’s choice and Satisfaction when they are traveling in outside. Besides, tourism climate affects the temporal and spatial distribution of tourism resource and tourist flow. So far academics has not reach a consensus on how to judge tourism climate and which model to choose. At present, scholars are accustomed to using climate comfort index to judge tourism climate index. Although climate comfort index is used widely in architecture, military, agriculture, including tourism. As we all known, tourism is different from other activities, other activities could conduct in indoor but tourism could not. It should be noted that precipitation is very important to tourism. However, almost all climate comfort index neglected precipitation and emphasized temperature, humidity, wind and sunshine. In summary, judging tourism climate could not use climate comfort index but tourism climate index. We choose tourism climate index that combining temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, sunshine, wind. Therefore, the research choose a tourism climate index to calculate tourism climate comfort which take place in mainland China about 40 years from 1971 to 2010s.The research explain the tourism climate comfortableness from two perspective:the spatial distribution of comfort at present and changes of comfort in the past 40 years. The result show that:l) the 40 annual average comfortableness in mainland China is more than 50,which is acceptable for most travelers. The comfortableness is decrease progressively from southeast to northwest. South of China had higher scores and Tibet and Qinghai had lower scores.2) The number of comfortable months in mainland China is 3-10 months. The average comfort months is 7 months in mainland China, Hainan and south of China Provinces is nearly reach to 10 months. Number of Month in Tibet and Qinghai province is less than 2 months.3) In the past 40 years, most of comfortableness in mainland China is increasing except for summer. The spatial distribution and its evolution of tourism climate comfort in mainland China are reasonably evaluated by the tourism climate index.