Assessment of climate change exposure of tourism in Hungary using observations and regional climate model data

Abstract

Climate constitutes key resources for tourism since it influences the range of tourism activities and the development of tourism supply. Tourism is highly sensitive to changes in climate elements. It is extremely important for adaptation strategy-making to explore whether the tourism climate conditions in a given region and at a specific time are appropriate and how they may change in the future. This is described by the exposure of the tourism sector to climate conditions and climate change. In this study, we analyse the exposure of tourism for Hungary on a district level and every month (from March to November) with the help of the modified Tourism Climate Index. First, the present conditions are evaluated based on a gridded observational database CarpatClim-HU, which forms the basis for assessing the future conditions. Afterwards, the expected future circumstances are analysed using regional climate model outputs. In order to interpret the uncertainties of the climate projections properly, we use two different model results (HIRHAM5 and RACMO22E) relying on two emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). The results have demonstrated that the most favourable conditions are found in spring (MAM) and autumn (SON), while in summer (JJA) a decline in climate potential is observed. According to the future tendencies, generally, a decline is expected between May and September, but the other investigated months usually bring an improvement. For a given emission scenario, the expected trend is quite similar for the two model experiments, while for a given climate model, the use of RCP8.5 scenario indicates larger changes than RCP4.5. The results prove that climate change will have an obvious impact on tourism potential in Hungary, and therefore tourism strategy development has to take into account this effect more than before.