Professor Daniel Scott

Global climate change represents a grand challenge for society, one that is increasingly influencing tourism sector investment, planning, operations, and demand. The paper provides an overview of the core challenges climate change poses to sustainable tourism, key knowledge gaps, and the state of preparedness in the tourism sector. As we begin what is widely considered a decisive climate decade, low sectoral preparedness should be highly disconcerting for the tourism community. Put bluntly, what we have done for the past 30 years has not prepared the sector for the next 30 years of accelerating climate change impacts and the transformation to a decarbonized global economy. The transition from two decades of awareness raising and ambition setting to a decade of determined collective response has massive knowledge requirements and necessitates broad sectoral commitments to: (1) improved communications and knowledge mobilization, (2) increased research capacity and interdisciplinary collaboration, and (3) strategic policy and planning engagement. We in the tourism and sustainability communities must answer this clarion call to shape the future of tourism in a decarbonized and post +3 degrees C world, for there can be no sustainable tourism if we fail on climate change.

Snowmaking has been an integral part of the multi-billion-dollar ski industry in most regional markets for more than 20 years and is one of the most visible and widespread forms of climate adaptation in the tourism sector. Under accelerating climate change, snowmaking is projected to increase at most destinations - some substantially. Snowmaking has come under increasing criticism in recent years and branded by some scholars and ski industry observers as unsustainable and maladaptive as a climate change response. Using data on snowmaking from across the diverse US ski market, this study assesses snowmaking against multiple established criteria that define maladaptation. The analysis demonstrates that snowmaking is highly place-context specific, varying at the individual operator and regional market scales, and represents a continuum from successful (and sustainable) adaptation to maladaptation. Regions of the US where snowmaking is most likely to be maladaptive are identified (water insecure and carbon intense electricity grids). The framework highlights the importance of scale and a tourism system perspective when assessing (mal)adaptation and provides decision-makers with a tool to evaluate the compatibility of snowmaking with climate action plans at the destination and regional scale.

Disease outbreaks and pandemics have long played a role in societal and economic change. However, the nature of such change is selective, meaning that it is sometimes minimal and, at other times, and change or transformation may be unexpected, potentially even reinforcing contemporary paradigms. A comprehensive overview of pandemics and their effects is provided. This is used to help contextualise the COVID-19 pandemic, its impact on tourism and government, industry and consumer response. Drawing on the available literature, factors that will affect tourism and destination recovery are then identified. Some measures will continue or even expand present growth orientations in tourism while others may contribute to sustainability. It is concluded that that the selective nature of the effects of COVID-19 and the measures to contain it may lead to reorientation of tourism in some cases, but in others will contribute to policies reflecting the selfish nationalism of some countries. However, the response to planetary limits and sustainable tourism requires a global approach. Despite clear evidence of this necessity, the possibility for a comprehensive transformation of the tourism system remains extremely limited without a fundamental transformation of the entire planet.

Tourism industry and government demand for knowledge of the impacts of climate change on ski tourism is growing. Despite the more than 70-year history and large cultural significance of alpine skiing in Sweden, little is known about the industry's future under a changing climate. This study applies the SkiSim2 model with low to high emission scenarios (RCP2.6 to 8.5) to analyse the implications of climate change for ski operations (season length, snowmaking requirements) at 23 alpine ski areas across Sweden for the early, mid, and late 21 st century. Northern areas of Sweden show much less reduction in average season length compared to central and southern Sweden under the high emission mid-(13% versus 58% and 81%) and late-century scenarios (27% versus 72% and 99%). To limit season losses in these scenarios, snow production increases of over 250% are required in all regions. Such increases will create additional financial and environmental stressors, which may lead to the closure of the most at-risk resorts. With greater impacts projected for much of the European Alps ski market, northern Sweden may represent a 'last resort' for the European ski industry under higher emission scenarios by the mid-late 21st century.

Climate change poses complex challenges and addressing these requires increasing integration across policy domains. This research developed a framework to assess policy integration between the tourism and climate change domains by examining coverage, scope, materiality and alignment. A database of 101 policy documents was compiled, representing 61 countries over 17 years. Only 37 documents covered the tourism-climate nexus substantially, suggesting climate change has not yet become a priority for tourism policy makers. Considering that tourism makes considerable contributions to and is substantially impacted by climate change, the observed gaps in tourism policy needs to be addressed. The paper concludes with some minimum expectations for policy integration, including examples of good practice, and suggests that more effort is required to achieve climate change policy integration in tourism.

The tourism sector has recommitted itself to be 'climate neutral' by 2050 through its 2021 Glasgow Declaration: A Commitment to a Decade of Tourism Climate Action. The declared ambition is consistent with the Paris Climate Agreement and net-zero emission targets; however, lacks specific actions by which such a transition might be achieved. The highly influential International Energy Agency (IEA) has produced the most detailed global roadmap to a 2050 net-zero future. This paper examines its implications for the tourism sector. Getting to net-zero is imperative to ensure the societal disruption of a + 3 degrees C or warmer world are avoided, but the IEA net-zero scenario would nonetheless be as transformative for tourism as the internet was. International air travel and tourism growth projections from the tourism sector are not compatible with the IEA net-zero scenario. The geography of transition risk will influence tourism patterns unevenly. The incoherence of tourism and climate policy represents an increasing vulnerability for tourism development. While any business and destination in tourism can act immediately to reduce emissions, the findings compel a critical new research agenda to determine how the assumptions of the IEA, or any net-zero scenario, could be achieved and how this will affect tourism development.

Previous research demonstrated Northern Sweden may have a future competitive climatic advantage over the European Alps for ski tourism, yet knowledge of climate change risk perceptions, adaptation, and mitigation strategies undertaken by the Swedish ski industry remains limited. This study combined top-down ski season modelling and bottom-up semi-structured interviews with Swedish ski industry stakeholders to examine changing market dynamics, climate change risk perceptions, and current and future adaptations under the backdrop of Sweden’s potential climatic advantage. Findings indicate that despite a belief of having greater climate change recognition and preparedness than other international ski regions, stakeholders were reticent to link local conditions to anthropogenic climate change. Snowmaking was the most utilised adaptation option, and consistent with other regions was not explicitly seen as a climate change adaptation rather a prudent business decision. A gap between tourists’ demand for increased resort sustainability and the actions of resorts was also evident in several locations. Market dynamics are also considered as capitalising on Sweden’s potential climatic advantage will likely necessitate increased aviation travel and associated emissions, a potential barrier to the country’s ability to become a ‘last resort’ for European skiing due to Sweden’s ambitious, legally binding net-zero policy target of 2045.

The United Nations has declared climate change a code-red for humanity and the 2020s the decisive decade to avoid dangerous climate disruption. The 26(th) Conference of the Parties in Glasgow, Scotland represents a milestone event and potentially the last chance to keep the Paris Climate Agreement 1.5 degrees C policy goal within reach. The tourism sector has responded to this critical moment by releasing the Glasgow Declaration: A Commitment to a Decade of Tourism Climate Action. As the third such declaration over 20 years, this paper asks whether it brings the sector closer to an action agenda commensurate with the climate emergency the sector has declared. While the Glasgow Declaration includes some positive advances, we find few themes and recommended actions that were not introduced in previous declarations over a decade ago and inaction on several past recommendations. There is no evidence that the declarations have altered the growth trajectory of sector emissions or influenced the integration of climate change into tourism policy and planning. The climate crisis demands a sectoral response no less than that to the Covid-19 pandemic, and we find the Glasgow Declaration ill-equipped to stimulate the systemic change required by the net-zero transition and accelerating changes in climate.

The tourism sector declared a climate emergency in 2020. It is against this background that this Curated Collection on Climate Change and Tourism is launched. A bibliometric analysis of 1290 articles reviews the 35-year development of climate change and tourism scholarship, including major research themes, key knowledge gaps, and our capacity to deliver the enormous knowledge requirements for an effective sectoral climate response. A central finding is that the last three decades of research have failed to prepare the sector for the net-zero transition and climate disruption that will transform tourism over the next three decades. The climate change imperative demands more of the tourism academy and this collection will stimulate research and capacity for climate resilient tourism development. •This article launches the Annals Curated Collection on Tourism and Climate Change.•The 35-year development of scholarship on tourism and climate change is reviewed.•A bibliometric analysis of 1290 articles identifies major research themes and gaps.•Expands the concepts and interconnection of carbon and physical climate risk.•Capacity to meet future climate change knowledge demands is critically examined.

The International Olympic Committee recognizes the risks climate change pose to the Games and its responsibility to lead on climate action. Winter is changing at the past Olympic Winter Games (OWG) locations and an important perspective to understand climate change risk is that of the athletes who put themselves at risk during these mega-sport events. A survey of 339 elite athletes and coaches from 20 countries was used to define fair and safe conditions for snow sports competitions. The frequency of unfair-unsafe conditions has increased over the last 50 years across the 21 OWG host locations. The probability of unfair-unsafe conditions increases under all future climate change scenarios. In a low emission scenario aligned to the Paris Climate Agreement, the number of climate reliable hosts remains almost unchanged throughout the twenty-first century (nine in mid-century, eight in late century). The geography of the OWG changes radically if global emissions remain on the trajectory of the last two decades, leaving only one reliable host city by the end of the century. Athletes expressed trepidation over the future of their sport and the need for the sporting world to be a powerful force to inspire and accelerate climate action.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is challenging the world. With no vaccine and limited medical capacity to treat the disease, nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPI) are the main strategy to contain the pandemic. Unprecedented global travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders are causing the most severe disruption of the global economy since World War II. With international travel bans affecting over 90% of the world population and wide-spread restrictions on public gatherings and community mobility, tourism largely ceased in March 2020. Early evidence on impacts on air travel, cruises, and accommodations have been devastating. While highly uncertain, early projections from UNWTO for 2020 suggest international arrivals could decline by 20 to 30% relative to 2019. Tourism is especially susceptible to measures to counteract pandemics because of restricted mobility and social distancing. The paper compares the impacts of COVID-19 to previous epidemic/pandemics and other types of global crises and explores how the pandemic may change society, the economy, and tourism. It discusses why COVID-19 is an analogue to the ongoing climate crisis, and why there is a need to question the volume growth tourism model advocated by UNWTO, ICAO, CLIA, WTTC and other tourism organizations.

This study presents the first nationwide spatial assessment of flood risk to identify social vulnerability and flood exposure hotspots that support policies aimed at protecting high-risk populations and geographical regions of Canada. The study used a national-scale flood hazard dataset (pluvial, fluvial, and coastal) to estimate a 1-in-100-year flood exposure of all residential properties across 5721 census tracts. Residential flood exposure data were spatially integrated with a census-based multidimensional social vulnerability index (SoVI) that included demographic, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic indicators influencing vulnerability. Using Bivariate Local Indicators of Spatial Association (BiLISA) cluster maps, the study identified geographic concentration of flood risk hotspots where high vulnerability coincided with high flood exposure. The results revealed considerable spatial variations in tract-level social vulnerability and flood exposure. Flood risk hotspots belonged to 410 census tracts, 21 census metropolitan areas, and eight provinces comprising about 1.7 million of the total population and 51% of half-a-million residential properties in Canada. Results identify populations and the geographic regions near the core and dense urban areas predominantly occupying those hotspots. Recognizing priority locations is critically important for government interventions and risk mitigation initiatives considering socio-physical aspects of vulnerability to flooding. Findings reinforce a better understanding of geographic flood-disadvantaged neighborhoods across Canada, where interventions are required to target preparedness, response, and recovery resources that foster socially just flood management strategies.

The complexity of the human-environment interface predicates the need for tools and techniques that can enable the effective translation of weather and climate products into decision-relevant information. Indices are a category of such tools that may be used to simplify multi-faceted climate information for economic and other decision-making. Climate indices for tourism have been popularized in the literature over the past three decades, but despite their prevalence, these indices have a number of limitations, including coarse temporal resolution, subjective rating and weighting schemes, and lack of empirical validation. This paper critically assesses the design of the tourism climate index, the holiday climate index-beach, and a new, mathematically optimized index developed for the unique contextual realities of Great Lakes beach tourism. This new methodology combines the use of expert knowledge, stated visitor preferences, and mathematical optimization to develop an index that assigns daily weather scores based on four weather sub-indices (thermal comfort, wind speed, precipitation, and cloud cover). These daily scores are then averaged to the monthly level and correlated to visitation data at two beach parks in Ontario (Canada). This optimized index demonstrates a strong fit ( R 2  = 0.734, 0.657) with observed visitation at Pinery Provincial Park and Sandbanks Provincial Park, outperforming both the tourism climate index ( R 2  = 0.474, 0.018) and the holiday climate index-beach ( R 2  = 0.668, 0.427). This study advances our understanding of the magnitude and seasonality of weather impact on beach tourist visitation and can inform decision-making of tourism marketers and destination managers.

Climate change is an evolving business reality in the ski industry, with recent trends toward shorter ski seasons and emerging climate risk disclosure requirements. Climate change impacts under low- to high-emission futures are examined at 99 ski areas in the American Midwest market with snowmaking. Mid-century season losses range from −25% in a low-emission scenario (SSP245), to −29% under moderate-emissions (SSP370), and − 38% with high-emissions (SSP585). Depending on demand response, utilization intensity could increase between 23 and 40% from the current 4.8 skiers/per acre-day with implications for crowding and visitor experience at ski areas still in operation. Highlighting the importance of low-emission futures, by late-century, transformational impacts in high-emission scenarios would largely eliminate this regional market. The results are compared with previous studies that neglected snowmaking as a climate risk management strategy and thereby substantially overestimated the impact of mid-century and low-emission scenarios. •Snowmaking is an important climate change adaptation for the Midwest ski industry.•Successful Paris Agreement emission futures reduce mid-century ski seasons 25%.•High emission futures largely eliminate this regional ski market in late century.•Past studies that omit snowmaking overestimate ski industry climate risk.•Snowmaking is maladaptive in states with carbon-intensive electricity grids.

By using risk-adjusted price signals to transfer responsibility for property-level flood protection and recovery from governments to property owners, flood insurance represents a key tenet of the flood risk management (FRM) paradigm. The Government of Canada has worked with insurers to introduce flood insurance for the first time as a part of a broader shift towards FRM to limit the growing costs of flooding. The viability of flood insurance in Canada, however, has been questioned by research that disputes the utility of purchasing coverage by property owners. This study tested this assumption by drawing on public opinion survey data to assess factors that influence decisions about the utility of insurance. The findings reveal that Canadians have limited knowledge of flood insurance coverage, exhibit a low willingness-to-pay for both insurance and property-level flood protection measures, and expect governments to shoulder much of the financial burden of flood recovery through disaster assistance.

This study explores flood-related environmental injustices by deconstructing racial, ethnic, and socio-demographic disparities and spatial heterogeneity in the areal extent of fluvial, pluvial, and coastal flooding across Canada. The study integrates JBA Risk Management's 100-year Canada Flood Map with the 2016 national census-based socioeconomic data to investigate whether traditionally recognized vulnerable groups and communities are exposed inequitably to inland (e.g., fluvial and pluvial) and coastal flood hazards. Social vulnerability was represented by neighbourhood-level socioeconomic deprivation, including economic insecurity and instability indices. Statistical analyses include bivariate correlation and a series of non-spatial and spatial regression techniques, including ordinary least squares, binary logistic regression, and simultaneous autoregressive models. The study emphasizes the quest for the most appropriate methodological framework to analyze flood-related socioeconomic inequities in Canada. Strong evidence of spatial effects has motivated the study to test for the spatial heterogeneity of covariates by employing geographically weighted regression (GWR) on continuous outcome variables (e.g., percent of residential properties in a census tract exposed to flood hazards) and geographically weighted logistic regression on dichotomous outcome variables (e.g., a census tract in or out of flood hazard zone). GWR results show that the direction and statistical significance of relationships between inland flood exposure and all explanatory variables under consideration are spatially non-stationary. We find certain vulnerable groups, such as females, lone-parent households, Indigenous peoples, South Asians, the elderly, other visible minorities, and economically insecure residents, are at a higher risk of flooding in Canadian neighbourhoods. Spatial and social disparities in flood exposure have critical policy implications for effective emergency management and disaster risk reduction. The study findings are a foundation for a more detailed investigation of the disproportionate impacts of flood risk in Canada.

Climate change has become a business planning reality in the ski industry, with differential impacts and adaptive capacity important for intra- and inter-regional market competitiveness. Potential climate change impacts are examined at 171 ski areas in Ontario, Quebec and the US Northeast using the SkiSim2 model with regional parameterizations of snowmaking capacity. With advanced snowmaking, mid-century season length losses are limited to 12-13% under a low emission pathway (RCP 4.5), increasing to 15-22% under high emissions (RCP 8.5). By late-century, low and high emission pathways diverge creating very different futures for the ski industry. Season length and skiable terrain losses increase only marginally in the low emission pathway, while transformational impacts occur under a high emission pathway, with only 29 ski areas in Quebec and high-elevation areas of the US Northeast able to maintain a 100-day season and open regularly for the economically important Christmas-New Year holiday. A low emission future, where current national pledges to Paris Climate Agreement are achieved, is crucial to preserve the Eastern North America ski tourism marketplace. The results are compared with previous studies that have neglected the adaptive capacity of snowmaking and substantially overestimated the impact of mid-century and lower emission climate change scenarios.

This study integrates novel data on 100-year flood hazard extents, exposure of residential properties, and place-based social vulnerability to comprehensively assess and compare flood risk between Indigenous communities living on 985 reserve lands and other Canadian communities across 3701 census subdivisions. National-scale exposure of residential properties to fluvial, pluvial, and coastal flooding was estimated at the 100-year return period. A social vulnerability index (SVI) was developed and included 49 variables from the national census that represent demographic, social, economic, cultural, and infrastructure/community indicators of vulnerability. Geographic information system-based bivariate choropleth mapping of the composite SVI scores and of flood exposure of residential properties and population was completed to assess the spatial variation of flood risk. We found that about 81% of the 985 Indigenous land reserves had some flood exposure that impacted either population or residential properties. Our analysis indicates that residential property-level flood exposure is similar between non-Indigenous and Indigenous communities, but socioeconomic vulnerability is higher on reserve lands, which confirms that the overall risk of Indigenous communities is higher. Findings suggest the need for more local verification of flood risk in Indigenous communities to address uncertainty in national scale analysis.

Skiing is an important part of Norwegian culture, but as climate change leads to warmer, more variable winters, the ski industry needs to adapt. Despite the growing literature on climate change impacts on ski tourism, adaptation options, particularly beyond snowmaking, barriers and the financial and visitor experience implications remain under-researched. Employing projections for future snow and snowmaking conditions, this paper investigates adaptive capacity among seven Western Norwegian ski resorts. Adaptive capacity is examined in terms of physical situation, technology, economic resources, innovative ability, networks and institutions. We find that smaller resorts make up for poor economic performance by drawing on local community support and by implementing innovative efforts to diversify income. Nonetheless, despite high adaptive capacity with respect to networks, institutions and innovative ability, increased snow production costs will make operations in three low-lying resorts unviable as early as the 2030s, with salient implications for winter tourism patterns, small community economies and future participation in the sport. The results also suggest that studies using snow production model projections that represents physical and technical adaptive capacity only, may be conservative in their estimated impact of future climate change.

Although ski tourism in China is experiencing a boom, and the number of operating ski areas has significantly increased, the influence of climate change on the future development of China's ski industry has so far largely been overlooked. This paper addresses this important gap by applying the ski season simulation model SkiSim 2.0 at 116 ski areas. Four main indicators of climate change impact were examined: ski season length, operational ski days in economically important season segments, technically produced snow and snowmaking requirements. For all ski resorts in China and all climate change scenarios, average ski seasons are projected to shorten (- 4 to - 61% RCP 4.5; - 6 to - 79% RCP 8.5 in the 2050s) while snowmaking needs increase (27 to 51% RCP 4.5; 46 to 80% RCP 8.5 in the 2050s). The results indicate that high regional differences in climate change vulnerability exist. The implications for altered competitiveness and development potential of the ski industry in China are discussed.

Through an empirical investigation of the historical relationship between the destination climate and tourist arrivals in the Caribbean, this study presents the first revealed preference evaluation of a climate index informed by tourists' stated climatic preferences for coastal-beach tourism (i.e., a sun-sand-surf or 3S travel market). The goal of this multi-organization collaboration was to examine the potential application of a newly designed climate index the Holiday Climate Index (HCI):Beach for three Caribbean destinations (Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Saint Lucia). This paper provides an overview of the evolution of climate indices, including the development of the (HCI):Beach. To test the validity of climate indices for a beach travel market, daily climate ratings based on outputs from the Tourism Climate Index and the HCI were correlated with monthly arrivals data from Canada (a key source market) at an island destination scale. The results underscore the strength of the new index, with each destination scoring consistently higher using the HCI:Beach, including a stronger relationship (R-2) between index scores and tourist arrivals. These findings demonstrate the value of combining stated and revealed preference methodologies to predict tourism demand and highlight opportunities for future research.

The multi-billion-dollar global ski tourism industry faces significant climate risks as evidenced by a significant body of literature. Despite this a wide gap persists between leading research, common media portrayals, and ski industry climate risk perceptions; and the global ski industry generally remains ill prepared for accelerating climate changes. Considering the salience of climate change for the ski industry and the extent to which public media sources are cited as important channels for climate information by ski industry leaders, this research analyzes media portrayals of ski industry climate risk over time (1988-2019). Exploring both the quantity and content of coverage mainstream media gives to ski tourism and climate change, this research finds that media disproportionately covers the global ski tourism market geographically, uses four dominant frames; disaster, settled science, economic, and unsettled science, and often fails to cite credible research or experts. Typical media coverage is likely a barrier to ski industry acceptance of credible science and may contribute to slower climate responsiveness. The paper concludes with a discussion of opportunities to improve research-media-industry communication with the aim of enhancing industry climate preparedness.

Flood risk maps are essential sources of information for flood risk management (FRM) decisions. Commercial flood models used by the insurance industry are rarely studied in the academic literature which has led to difficulties in understanding their sources of uncertainty and opportunities for improvement. This paper compares regions and residential properties identified as exposed to floods by an insurance industry model and by government authorities responsible for FRM in three Canadian cities. Findings show that the insurance model is identifying substantially greater number of regions and properties as at-risk of flood, and little overlap exists between public and private flood maps. The paper discusses opportunities for data integration and increased data transparency for supporting flood resiliency efforts in Canada. •This study leverages flood maps used by governments and insurance companies to detect residential flood exposure.•Findings show large differences in the number and location of residential properties in flood zones recognized by each sector.•The paper discusses opportunities for cross-sectoral collaboration in data management for improving flood risk management.

Climate change represents a new era for protected areas and biodiversity conservation. With the redistribution of species and unparalleled declines in biodiversity, business-as-usual practices are unlikely to be effective. Despite progress on many facets of establishing, protecting, and managing protected areas over the past century, some of which may help to lessen or slow the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, more targeted efforts need to be developed and implemented to address growing climate challenges. To assess progress on climate change adaptation, a survey was distributed to provincial, territorial, and federal governments as well as environmental non-governmental organizations working in conservation in Canada (n = 49). Findings indicate that little progress has been made on adaptation in Canada's protected areas sector over the past decade, despite greater certainty about the impacts of climate change. Differences in monitoring, adaptation strategies, and key barriers exist across organizations. Importantly, the majority of organizations continue to report they lack capacity to address climate change issues affecting protected areas and face persistent barriers to implementing adaptation strategies. Recommendations to increase adaptation include enhancing knowledge mobilization, implementing a national adaptation strategy, and developing more flexible conservation objectives.

Climate change is increasingly influencing tourism policy and practice and there is a growing need to assess climate risk for destinations and the potential implications for global tourism demand patterns. Climate-dependent tourism markets, such as beach tourism, are particularly sensitive to changes in climate, and understanding the future redistribution of tourism climate resources remains a gap in many world leading tourism regions. This paper presents the first climate change assessment of tourism climate resources in China. The Holiday Climate Index:beach (HCI:beach) and Holiday Climate Index:urban (HCI:urban) are calculated for 775 climate stations across China for the 1981-2010 baseline and mid and late-twenty-first century using projections from six CMIP5 Global Climate Models under low and high emission futures. The projected geographic and seasonal redistribution of tourism climate resources are advantageous for many climate-limited destinations but pose high heat risks for some major city destinations. The differential results for the HCI:beach and HCI:urban reinforce the importance of utilising market-specific indices to assess future climate risk. The results provide new decision-relevant climate information for tourism managers and destination planners throughout China.

Climate indices have a long history of use to combine multi-faceted climate information for tourism resource evaluation. Traditionally, indices have been used to assess tourists' sensitivity to destination climatic pull factors, not tourists' sensitivity to source market climate as a push factor for seasonality-driven markets. This study addresses this gap by using tourism climate indices to assess the influence of climatic push and pull factors for seasonal fluctuations in arrivals to Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, and Saint Lucia, from the province of Ontario, Canada (from January 2008 to December 2017). Building on the conceptual foundation of the Holiday Climate Index:Beach (HCI:Beach), this study uses an optimization algorithm to develop two indices: (1) an optimized in-situ index that estimates the climatic pull-factor of the destination, and (2) an optimized ex-situ index that estimates the climatic push-factor from the source market. Findings reveal the optimized ex-situ (push) index explains 83% (R 2  = 0.830) of the variability in total monthly arrivals from Ontario and has greater predictive accuracy than the in-situ (pull) index. The research advances understanding of climatic influences on Caribbean tourism arrivals and provides the foundation for new seasonal forecast-based Climate Services (CS) for destination managers and marketers.

Climatic resources are vitally important for tourism, driving major intra- and inter-regional travel flows for sun-sand-surf (3S) tourism around the world. The development of climate indices to measure the suitability of climate for major tourism market segments has evolved over three decades. This study provides the first application of the holiday climate index (HCI):Beach specification in the Asia-Pacific tourism region. The HCI is designed from international tourist climate preference studies and is compared with the tourism climate index (TCI), which is widely applied, but not based on tourist climate preferences. The index inter-comparison is conducted at 14 of the most popular beach resort destinations in China, which include four geographic regions of China with four different Köppen classifications. The results show key differences between the two indices in rating the climatic suitability of the selected beach destinations in China, with the TCI rating beach destinations in the north and south higher during the spring and fall seasons, which is not consistent with beach tourism visits. During the summer months, southern destinations have much higher HCI:Beach rating, reflecting the 3S tourists' desire for higher temperatures. The findings reinforce those from other tourism regions that indicate the TCI is not appropriate for assessing 3S tourism potential and that additional cross-cultural studies of tourist climate indices are needed to better inform market segment climate service development and to understand the potential impacts of future climate change.

Climate change is an evolving business reality influencing the sustainability of ski tourism worldwide. A new integrated model of the co-evolution of supply (27 ski areas) and demand-side (skier behaviour) climate change adaptation in the ski tourism market of Ontario, Canada is presented. Ski area operations are modeled under a high-emission 2050s scenario, with skier responses to altered operations informed by a survey of 2429 skiers. These market adaptive dynamics reveal new insights into differential climate risk, capturing patterns not apparent when considering only operational conditions of ski resorts. A decoupling of ski season length and skier visitation was found at four ski areas, where, despite average season length losses, visitation increased as a result of reduced competition. Simulated skier visit losses were smaller than reductions in season length, contributing to an increase in crowding. Growing the market of skiers was also identified as a critical adaptation strategy that could offset skier visit losses from shortened seasons. Climate change challenges the future sustainability of ski areas in this market in several ways: profitability of ski areas with substantially shorter seasons, increased snowmaking costs, crowding impacts on visitor experience, and potential overtourism at the few most climate resilient destinations.

Drought is one of the most serious natural disasters exacerbated by climate change. Changes in precipitation and temperature in the future increase the likelihood of drought in China. In this study, a stepwise cluster ensemble downscaling (SCED) model was developed to bias-correct projections of temperature and precipitation from multiple RCM outputs, and further characterized the drought hazards. The developed SCED model was used to aggregate and correct the results of multiple regional climate models, and its performance was proved to be reliable by comparing with the observed results. The proposed SCED method has been applied for drought projections over the Fujian province, China. The results showed that the changes of precipitation and temperature in Fujian would have obvious spatial heterogeneous characteristics. The temperature in the southeast coastal areas will increase by up to 4 & DEG;C and the precipitation will decrease by 3.1% in the late 21st century, while the temperature rises and precipitation increases in the southwest. Temperature in inland areas will be lower and precipitation will be less. The drought hazards were also characterized by both SPI and SPEI based on biased-corrected projections from SCED model. According to the SPI and SPEI indices, although the number of dry months in Fujian province will not change significantly in future, the spatial and temporal heterogeneity may become more explicit. Moreover, the moderate drought (from SPI) may increase while the general drought may decrease (from both SPI and SPEI). For extreme droughts, there would not be visible changes detected by SPI, but an increasing trend characterized since the impact of temperature was included in SPEI. In addition, there would be an increasing trend on drought when increasing temperature and precipitation occurred simultaneously.

Climate change risk has gained considerable attention within the ski industry and its investors. Several past studies have overlooked the adaptive capacity of snowmaking and within-season demand variation and therefore overestimated climate change impacts. This study of the Austrian ski market (208 ski areas) including snowmaking found impacts are substantial and spatially highly differentiated, but nonetheless manageable (season length losses of 10–16%) for the majority of ski areas until the 2050s under a high emissions pathway (RCP 8.5) or even the 2080s in a low emission pathway (RCP 4.5). The economic impacts of reduced operations are largely concentrated in regions less dependent on tourism. Preserving this sector in high-risk areas can be considered maladaptive, but may be important to maintain demand. A sustainable end-of-century future for a high proportion of Austria's ski areas is dependent on achieving the low-emission future set out in the Paris Climate Agreement. •The severity of projected climate change impacts depends on the ski industry performance indicators used.•The critical importance of snowmaking as a climate adaptation to reduce climate risk is demonstrated.•Projected climate change impacts are spatially highly diverse and highest in less-winter tourism dependent municipalities.•Destination competitiveness and reputation will be affected, with consequences for shareholders and public authorities.•Greater snowmaking is required to preserve ski season length and analysis of water access and storage should be a priority.

The Paris Agreement suggests that all countries engage in significant emission reductions. To stay within safe guardrails, usually defined as a maximum warming of 1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial times, this will mean decarbonisation within less than 30 years. This significant challenge is complicated because of growth in some sectors, such as tourism. This paper analyses emissions and economic output in Norway, considering national Tourism Satellite Accounts. Novel aspects of this paper include a longitudinal perspective covering 12 years through which critical developments and progress on emission reduction pathways can be assessed. Findings suggest that the carbon intensity of tourism (emissions per NOK) is more than twice the Norwegian economy average. Aviation in particular is a major barrier to emission reductions, as it generates 17% of national tourism revenue and 75% of direct tourism emissions. Trend extrapolation shows that tourism will be the largest emission sub-sector of the Norwegian economy by 2030. The Norwegian economy will have to decarbonise at a rate more than 30 times faster than its current rate, if it is to decarbonise to mid-century, while continuing on its observed economic growth trajectory. •Tourism contributed 3.6% of GDP and 8.8% of emissions in Norway in 2019.•Norwegian national emissions declined by 0.2% per year between 2007 and 2019.•Direct tourism emissions increased by 3.2% per year between 2007 and 2019.•Aviation is responsible for 80% of the net emission increase in tourism.•Norway will have to decarbonise 30 times faster to be net-zero by 2050.

This paper proposes a national-level socioeconomic status (SES) index to measure place-based relative social vulnerability and socioeconomic inequalities across Canada. The aim is to investigate how disparities in overall socioeconomic status influence environmental justice outcomes for Canadian flood risk management planning and funding structures. A micro-dataset of the 2016 Canadian census of population was used to derive a comprehensive SES index over 5739 census tracts. The index comprises 49 theoretically-important and environmental policy-relevant indicators of vulnerability that represent diverse aspects of socioeconomic, demographic, and ethnicity status of Canadians. Bartlett's test of sphericity, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy, Cronbach's alpha scale reliability, and goodness-of-fit for factor's solution were employed to assess validity, reliability, and consistency in the dataset before applying principal components analysis. Our data revealed 11 statistically-significant multidimensional factors, which together explained 80.86% of the total variation. Levene's homogeneity of variance test disclosed a considerable socioeconomic disparity across census tracts, census metropolitan areas (CMAs), and provinces/territories in Canada. Social vulnerability tends to be geographically stratified across Canada. For example, Drummondville, Saguenay, and Granby CMAs (all in Quebec) had the lowest SES scores, whereas Vancouver and Toronto CMAs had the highest SES scores. Prevalence of spatial variations in the SES scores has significant implications for appraising overall social well-being and understanding the relative social vulnerability of population subgroups. The new place-based SES index has potential for assessing environmental justice outcomes in flood risk management at the census tract level.

The demand for foresight on how climate change will alter the competitiveness of ski destinations continues to increase. Norway is often considered the country where modern skiing began, yet its climate change risk remains largely unknown. The SkiSim2 model is run with RCP 4.5 and 8.5 emission climate futures to analyse implications for ski season at 110 alpine ski areas in Norway in the 2030s, 2050s, and 2080s with only natural snow and with advanced snowmaking. A considerable shortening of the ski season in projected as early as the 2030s for the half of ski areas that currently lack snowmaking. Naturally snow reliable ski areas decline from approximately half in the 2030s to a third in the 2050s. With snowmaking, ski season losses are substantially reduced and the majority of ski areas remain snow reliable until the end of the twenty-first century in a lower emission future. A substantial shortening of the ski season (up to 40 days) nonetheless begins in the 2050s under a high emission scenario. The need to invest in snowmaking will continue to increase, with attendant financial and sustainability implications. The differential climate risk among five regions of Norway and the European Alps is also discussed.