PROJECTION OF THE CHANGES IN WEATHER POTENTIALLY AFFECTING TOURISM IN THE YAEYAMA ISLANDS UNDER GLOBAL WARMING

抄録

 Changes in the occurrence of severe weather and clear days in the Yaeyama Islands under global warming conditions are assessed to estimate the impact of climate change on tourism. Although previous studies have investigated the impact of climate change on tourism using historical weather datasets and/or field surveys and have indicated a significant relationship between them, the investigation using future projection has not yet been studied comprehensively. In this study, the projection is thus conducted using, Database for Policy Decision making for Future climate change (d4PDF), a dataset generated by superensemble climate simulations. In order to use the dataset effectively, a simple method that considers the spread of the projected ensemble members is applied. This method estimates future changes and provide a range of uncertainty derived from the ensemble spread. The results indicate that the occurrence of severe events such as heavy precipitation or strong winds will decrease in summer, and the occurrence of clear days, which tourists prefer, will increase in winter. This suggests that climate change will induce regional weather changes which is supposed to be closely related with the satisfaction level of tourism in the Yaeyama Islands. Also, the approach proposed in this study has a potential to provide an efficient way to utilize massive climate projection datasets for various climate change impact assessment studies.