Thermal and physical facets of climate for recreation and sporting activities in the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Russian Far East

Weather and climate constitute the natural resource-base of a place for recreation and tourism. Climatic resources are an important condition for development of tourist activity and represent meteorological elements or their combinations which have medical and biological properties and are used in recreation. The relationship between the atmospheric environment and the enjoyable pursuit of outdoor recreational activity is a function of three facets of climatic conditions. Some climate variables are entirely physical (e.g., rain and its duration, high wind), some are physiological or thermal (e.g., air temperature and thermal state of the human body), some are psychological or aesthetic (e.g., clear blue sky, bright day or visibility). Thermal qualities of climate along with physical facets such as wind, rain and snow are important determinants of the suitability of weather and climate for outdoor recreation and sporting activities. The central objective of this paper is to present the possibility of assessment of climate physical facets for sport recreation taking into account the impact of climatic factors on the thermal state of a human body in the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR). Period favorable for summer recreation is insignificant and makes only a half of the duration of the warm season as a whole everywhere in the region. Limiting factors are dry or sultry weather, heavy precipitation and uncomfortable air temperatures at the beginning and at the end of the warm season. Mountain area is more acceptable for summer recreation with less sultry days and stronger wind. Data on water temperature in rivers and lakes corrects the results on the duration of the period favorable for beach recreation. In winter, the period unfavorable for outdoor recreation lasts from the middle of December to the middle - end of January, longer in mountains. Snow cover and its depth are important characteristics of physical facets for skiing and mountain-skiing tourism. Steady snow cover is formed from the second or third decade of November till the second - third decade of March. Extremely cold temperature and insufficient snow cover limit recreational and sporting activity in winter alongside with strong wind of more than 7 - 8 m/s. As a whole, the results show that conditions vary spatially and temporally through the region with two recreational-climatic zones. In some cases, markedly favorable periods are short; in others the periods are more persistent. A scheme that integrates important weather variables is used to assess the nature and duration of periods of favorable conditions for recreational and sporting activities. The work is considered useful for identifying recreational land use potential and could be valuable in planning and related decision-making in the tourism sector.

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