Tourism Economies and Climate Change: A Brief Review of New Data and Quantitative Approaches
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13052/jrss0974-8024.1829Keywords:
Global warming, official statistics, economic costs, indicators, EuropeAbstract
Adopting a bio-geo-physical perspective, the present study briefly discusses the cumulative effect of weather events on tourism economies. Regional warming is herein regarded as a multidimensional process, whose economic repercussions can be systematically quantified through diverse sets of quantitative indicators. Such measures capture its variegated manifestations across spatial scales, from the regional to the local – ranging from incremental temperature increases and progressive soil aridification to the growing recurrence of droughts, the intensification of extreme meteorological events (e.g. strong winds), and the oscillation between water scarcity and abrupt surges in atmospheric humidity. The synthesis of these effects delineates the principal causal mechanisms through which climate change translates into tangible outcomes for tourism-related activities. This analytical framework is further enriched through the integration of recent statistical evidence released by official statistics estimating the monetary costs of climate change from both historical and prospective vantage points. The incorporation of such indicators within a broader interpretative scheme of local socio-economic systems provides a novel and methodologically robust approach to the assessment of climate-related costs across multiple spatial and temporal dimensions.
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