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Tourism and climate are inextricably linked to several interactions. In recent years, there has been a greater focus on the linkages between climate change and coastal tourism. This study aims to provide an overview of the literature on climate change and coastal tourism, identify core areas of interest and important sources and authors, and examine the thematic evolution of the field. A bibliometric analysis of 92 documents related to climate change and coastal tourism published in the Web of Science Core Collection database was carried out. The analysis provides information on the most cited papers, most leading authors, the most productive countries, and the most leading institutions in this field. The study utilized the Visualization of Similarities Viewer program (VOS) to map author keyword co-occurrences, co-citations, and bibliographic coupling. The study showed that, with some fluctuations since 2008, the number of publications in this field had increased significantly. The most influential authors and most productive institutions are from the United States of America, England, Canada, and other European countries. The findings of this study will assist researchers conducting climate change and coastal tourism-related studies to understand which papers, academics, organizations, countries, and journals have a dominant influence on climate change and coastal tourism research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate is an essential component in the sustainability of tourism cities. Coastal tourism cities face unprecedented challenges under a changing climate. The complexity of the tourism–climate interface predicates the need for tools that can assess the weather and climate accurately. Tourism climate indices have been widely developed to evaluate the temporal and spatial distribution of climate resources, but these indices are not entirely applicable to coastal cities facing air pollution. This study developed a Coastal Tourism Climate Index (CTCI) to assess the tourism climate suitability of Chinese coastal cities. The CTCI was developed to include five variables: thermal comfort, sunshine, precipitation, wind, and air quality. This index was applied and verified in the case of nine coastal tourism cities in China compared to the Holiday Climate Index (HCI: Beach). According to the results, the CTCI is more suitable for coastal tourism climate assessment in China. Finally, corresponding countermeasures are put forward for the balanced and sustainable development of Chinese coastal tourism cities. This study takes the lead in applying big data to the development and validation of tourism climate indices. These findings provide novel insights for the tourism climate assessment of coastal destinations facing air pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]