There are few activities – besides agriculture, perhaps – that are as dependent on meteorology and climatology, that is to say, both the prevailing weather and long term Climate changes, as tourism. Tourism and leisure are based on a range of activities that, in large part, take place outdoors. Generally speaking, tourism loves good weather – and tourists as well!

What will the weather be like tomorrow?

Weather conditions and their changes in the short term are important for tourism, as they also are for leisure activities practiced close to home. The quality and reliability of forecasts have improved considerably over the course of the past years, and weather predictions are now also valid for a longer period of time ahead, which allows everybody, whether tourists or leisure industry professionals, to better plan their activities in advance. Meteorology is no longer a game of chance, a divinatory practice or one of the more esoteric branches of astrology, and the tourism sector is one of the primary beneficiaries of this development. Nevertheless, the interrelation between tourism, leisure and travel on the one hand, and meteorology in the broad sense, on the other hand, is not limited to the short term. Both sectors have another area of concern in common: that of the evolution of climate over the long term. It is true that, for the very long term, there is a lack of points of reference, and when they do exist, they are sometimes surprising. For example, the grape harvests were particularly early in the great French wine region of Burgundy in 2003, when the summer was marked by an exceptional heat wave, and the year that was closest to that one in history was…1523. But the direction of recent change is clear, and the phenomenon of acceleration of the last period is incontestable. It can only become more amplified.

Warming, a central challenge for a major industry

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just confirmed, at its meetings held in January February 2007 in Paris, and then in April in Brussels, and most recently in Bangkok in April May, what awaits us with near certainty: a rise in temperature caused by human activity on the order of 1.8 to 4 degrees between now and the end of the century, taking the respective midpoints of the IPCC’s most optimistic and most pessimistic scenarios. The ranges are still wide, but the change, unfortunately, is inevitable. Even if greenhouse gas emissions were to suddenly cease – something that no one can really expect to happen – the inertia of the system is such that warming will continue for several decades, given the volume of 2 what has already been released into the atmosphere. Climate is like one of those mastodons of the sea, container ships or supertankers: even if the engine stops, the vessel will continue to move forward along its course for a long time. The tourism and leisure industry therefore finds itself absolutely obliged to cope with the prospect of a significant warming of the climate over the long term. This is no minor problem since it concerns a considerable sector of the world’s economy and society: according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), 842 million people traveled to a country other than their own during 2006 (the equivalent of the population of Africa); they spent over 500 billion dollars at their destinations, and that is without counting airline transport receipts or taking into account domestic travel within each country. Tourism has become one of the biggest categories of international trade, generating receipts that represent (including air transport) 40 per cent of trade in services. Thus, even if the warming trend could be brought under control and slowed down, it is very much a major challenge that, under all hypotheses, awaits not just the tourism industry, but also through it, the world economy as a whole.