ANALYSIS OF TOURISM POTENTIAL FOR CRETE ISLAND, GREECE

To describe the tourism potential of an area, not only single meteorological parameters have to be taken into account, but also thermal sensation and people's thermal comfort. The latter can be estimated by the use of human energy balance models and the derived thermal indices, which comprise all relevant meteorological parameters like air temperature, air humidity, wind speed, and short and long wave radiation fluxes. This paper makes an attempt to assess and analyze climatological parameters and the thermal comfort of Crete, its variations and trends for the period of time 1955-2001. In addition, a definition and quantification of the island's tourism potential is carried out. Long term data from several stations are used from the existing climatic and synoptic network of Crete, including daily mean, maximum and minimum temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and cloud cover over the whole island, in order to derive the daily Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET) and precipitation. In addition, possible trends of thermal comfort and precipitation on an annual and seasonal basis are analyzed. Additionally, data of the 10-minutes climatology of the Climate Research Unit of the University of Norwich have been processed in order to create high resolution (1 km) mean monthly maps for climatological parameters such as air temperature, precipitation and Physiologically Equivalent Temperature.