Climate change: All ski areas will see a lack of snow
According to a study, all major ski areas should prepare for a lack of snow. However, with effective climate protection, the decline will only be moderate.
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Skis and toboggans: poor. Due to climate change, low-altitude ski areas in particular will lose snow. Even the Australian Alps, where this lift is located, are threatened by the complete loss of snow cover.
In the coming decades, almost all of the world's major ski areas will have to face an increasing shortage of snow, according to a team of scientists led by Veronika Mitrovalner from the University of Bayreuth. The reason for this is climate change. However, if humanity wanted to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it could also reduce snow shortages: none of the seven ski areas examined would fall below the average threshold of less than a hundred days of snow cover per year. The calculation showed that .
In her position In the specialized magazine “PLoS ONE” However, the researchers also show that under high and very high emissions scenarios, the number of days with snow cover will decrease, sometimes dramatically. In the European Alps, for example, the number will fall from more than 200 today to just under 150. 13% of the world's ski resorts could lose all of their natural snow cover by 2100.
In addition, this decline does not have the same impact on all areas within a ski area: lower elevations are significantly affected by snow loss, even under the optimistic scenario of an effective reduction in CO2.2-Emissions. As a result, ski operations have to traverse less developed high altitudes or use artificial means below. Both put pressure on the mountain environment and any remaining intact ecosystems on which humans indirectly depend.
In addition to the European Alps, Mitrovalner and his team also looked at mountain ranges in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, North America (the Rockies and Appalachians), and the Andes in South America. There they identified individual ski areas and recorded changes in the number of days of snow cover predicted by a common climate model.
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