Analyzing the Climatic Potentials for Development of Tourism and Water Sports in Khorassan Razavi Province of Iran

Nowadays, tourism is affected by the knowledge of a region’s climatic characteristics. Therefore, it is crucial to identify the potential regions and appropriate time for attracting tourists in relation to climatic comfort. Due to having climatic diversity and water resources such as rivers, waterfalls, caves and hot springs, Khorassan Razavi province is one of the potential regions for tourism attraction in IRAN. This study attempts to assess human comfort or discomfort for recreational and water sports activities according to Equivalent Effective Temperature (EET) index using meteorological data from Khorassan Razavi synoptic station for 1990-2011. Furthermore, the climatic comfort zoning map for tourism in the province was made by ArcGIS and Geographic Information System (GIS) potentials by inverse distance weighting (IDW) interpolation method. The results showed that October, June, September, April, May, August and July have the best comfort conditions for recreational activities and water sports, respectively. Also, Nishabur and Chenaran cities with 4 and Mashhad with 1 month had the longest and the shortest monthly periods for using water resorts, respectively. Similarly, in this research, available appropriate tourism areas are introduced according to the EET index for different months in order to achieve a higher understanding of the province’s potentials.