Evaluating climate wellness suitability in typical climate tourism cities in Southern China

In order to quantitatively evaluate the climate wellness suitability of cities with excellent climate tourism resources in southern China, this study was conducted to construct an evaluation method based on 4 indexes, namely the human comfort index ( I CHB ), air quality index (AQI), negative oxygen ions (NOIs), and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), using the analytic hierarchy process. Eight climate tourism cities (named ‘China Natural Oxygen Bar’) were selected to calculate the monthly climate wellness index (CWI) for the period 2020-2023 using the above method. The results showed that the AQI of the 8 cities was excellent, with more than 2000 units cm -3 of annual average levels of NOIs. The monthly levels of NDVI and I CHB ranged from 0.61 to 0.83 and from 38 to 83, respectively. The contributions of these parameters to the CWI followed the order of I CHB (0.47), AQI (0.29), NOIs (0.18), NDVI (0.06). The CWI values differed slightly among the seasons, following the order of spring (0.66), autumn (0.63), summer (0.60), and winter (0.39), which was consistent with the current tourism situation. Furthermore, the optimal CWI for different cities occurred in different seasons: Anyuan County recorded the peak CWI in spring and winter, while Jinggangshan City and Zixi County had the highest values in summer and autumn, respectively. This evaluation method provides support for the tourism sector to rationally develop climate health resources and for tourists to choose climate health destinations.