Changes in universal thermal climate index from regional climate model projections over European beaches

Abstract

Millions of people travel to European beaches making beach tourism the largest tourism sector. Understanding how person’s thermal comfort changes with projected climate change, which is paramount in deciding where and when to visit, can help the tourism sector mitigate risk and identify opportunities. Sustainable adaptation strategies for coastal tourism can be developed for different regional changes. This work calculates the Universal Thermal Comfort Index (UTCI), a comprehensive assessment of the human physiological response to the thermal environment, from an ensemble of regional climate models participating in EURO-CORDEX. Under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 8.5, the ensemble’s projections of the UTCI in the near- and far-future, compared to a historical reference period, show a robust and statistically significant increase across the entire EURO-CORDEX domain. Four popular beach regions in Germany, Italy, France, and Spain show the beach season can be extended - starting earlier and ending later each year. Across the Mediterranean, July and August exhibit, on average, 4 more days of ‘very strong’ heat stress and 1 day of ‘extreme’ heat stress at the end of the century. In accordance with FAIR data science principles, the UTCI calculation is available in the xclim open-source python library.