Shifting summer holidays in Spain as an adaptation measure to climate change

This paper assesses whether moving summer holidays to the warmest period of the year in Spain could be a useful climate change adaptation strategy. While the most popular period for Spanish summer holidays has traditionally been August, we illustrate that the second half of July is the hottest perio...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Garrido Pérez, José Manuel, García Herrera, Ricardo Francisco, Barriopedro Cepero, David, Ordóñez García, Carlos
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/91053
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/91053
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:551.51
Holidays
Electricity demand
Work productivity
Air quality
Ozone
Global warming
Física atmosférica
2502 Climatología
2501 Ciencias de la Atmósfera
Descripción
Sumario:This paper assesses whether moving summer holidays to the warmest period of the year in Spain could be a useful climate change adaptation strategy. While the most popular period for Spanish summer holidays has traditionally been August, we illustrate that the second half of July is the hottest period of the year and when the negative effects of high temperatures are most pronounced. If the holiday period in the second fortnight of August was moved to the second fortnight of July, some of the associated impacts would be mitigated due to the reduced anthropogenic activity during non-working days. In particular, we find a significant reduction in the annual peak of labour productivity loss (~25 %) and, to a lesser extent, of electricity demand and near-surface ozone concentrations (~3–4 %). Finally, we also show that global warming could lead to enhanced differences between both fortnights (even with no change in the seasonal cycle of temperature) because of the non-linear relationships between temperature and its impacts. Therefore, the positive effect of shifting holidays would be even larger in the coming future.