Zoning of Tourism Climate of Iran

Climate and tourism are interconnected in many different ways. The most important direct effects of climate on tourism occur at the micro and local scale. Weather and climate information is interest to both tourists and the tourist industry. Information on climate is useful for planning vacations. A useful climate advisory service will help to prepare and protect travelers and tourists against the climatic hazards. Climate comfort mostly depends on temperature, humidity, radiation and wind. In this study, Tourism climate Index (TCI) has been investigated in terms of zoning of temporal tourism activities in Iran.

This studied explores the effects of climate conditions on the climatic resources for tourism in Iran using 253 meteorology Stations data, and using the Tourism Climatic Index (TCI) devised by Mieczkowski (1985).

The analysis suggests that major shifts are to be expected in the attractiveness Iran. It will see its comfort distribution change from a ‘summer peak' to a ‘bimodal distribution', as they become less attractive in summer and more attractive in spring and autumn. The Tourism Climatic Index proves to be a valuable tool for assessing the impact of climate conditions on tourism. It shows that tourism in Iran is limitable to the impacts of climate condition, and also that there are big limits in south coastal and desert areas on center of Iran, even though there have great and good weather condition on winter while the most area of Iran cover by snow and cold air, so they have impossible status for ecotourism.

Keywords: Human energy balance, Physiological Equivalent Temperature, Mean