Determining the tourism climatic comfort index for Khorasan Razavi province using GIS

This study aims to evaluate tourism development in Khorasan Razavi. Nowadays, tourism is affected by the region’s climate characteristics. Weather has an important effect on tourism and, in some areas, tourism industry can be turned into one of the most interesting industries. Some climatic elements have an important role in health, comfort, recreation and attracting tourists, while some others such as temperature, humidity, sunshine hours and wind are more important.
In this study, we determined suitable time for tourism in Khorasan Razavi for a period of 21 years (1999 – 2011) using Misnard climatic index by ArcGIS software to find distribution of Misnard index in the study area. The required data was obtained from Neyshabur's weather station. 175.86 ha of moderate greenness level vegetated lands to non-vegetated lands was noticed.

The results of this study showed that September, August, and June have the most suitable conditions for tourism in this province, and January, February, December and March have the worst conditions for tourism.