A new study has found that an era of reliably bountiful snow has already passed due to the climate crisis.
According to the report, the US ski industry has lost more than $5bn over the past two decades due to human-caused global heating, the new research has calculated, due to the increasingly sparse nature of snowfall on mountain ranges.
Previous studies have shown that in many locations precipitation is now coming in the form of rain, rather than snow, due to warming temperatures.
This situation, the new study states, has shortened the average ski season in the US by five to seven days over the past half century, costing the industry an average of $252m a year from lost revenue and the rising cost of making snow via machines.
“We are probably past the era of peak ski seasons,” said Daniel Scott, a scientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who undertook the research with colleagues at the University of Innsbruck. “Climate change is an evolving business reality for the ski industry and the tourism sector.”
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Unusually warm winters for parts of the US, as well as ski resorts in Europe, have illustrated the mounting problems facing the pastime. Mountains across France, Austria and Bosnia have been left almost entirely bare of snow, forcing ski lifts to judder to a halt and resorts to shutter.
In the US, sites across the western half of the country have reported less than half the normal snowpack, causing resorts to scramble into greater snow production or scale back their offering to skiers.
“The record-breaking temperatures this winter provided a preview of the future,” Scott said. “It tested the limits of snowmaking in many areas and altered millions of skiers’ ski visits and destination choices.”
Last year was the hottest, globally, ever recorded and 2024 is following this with extraordinary levels of heat that have set new records in January and February. The absence of a normal winter in many locations has been evident in the mountains, with the lack of snow not only imperiling winter sports but also risking a crucial reservoir of water where melting snowpack feeds rivers and streams throughout spring.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
