Guest post: How climate change will hit snow levels across Europe’s ski resorts
The ski tourism industry plays a major role in the economies of many of Europe’s mountain regions.
But declining snow cover as a result of climate transpiration is disrupting ski resorts wideness the continent, dramatically increasing the number of days where no skiing is possible.
As a result, these resorts are increasingly turning to strained snowmaking as an version measure to produce reliable snow imbricate for their pistes.
However, the effectiveness of snowmaking is highly variable and its use is controversial in mountain areas.
In our new study, published in Nature Climate Change, we assess the impacts of warming on 2,234 ski resorts wideness 28 European countries and the climate and water footprints of their future snowmaking needs.
Without snowmaking, we find that 53% and 98% of Europe’s ski resorts are projected to be at very upper risk for snow supply under global warming of 2C and 4C, respectively.
Using snowmaking to unzip 50% snow coverage on their pistes, these figures are reduced to 27% and 71% of ski resorts, respectively.
But spare snowmaking will have an impact, too – by increasing water and electricity demand and subtracting to the considerable stat footprint of the ski industry, which is typically mostly due to transportation and housing.
Our study is the first Europe-wide towage of future snow scarcity and the environmental impact of snowmaking, taking into worth the geography and characteristics of individual ski resorts.
Climate transpiration risk
Europe is the world’s largest ski tourism market, with around 50% of the world’s total ski resorts and increasingly than 80% of the world’s ski resorts that exceed 1m skier visits per year.
But the snow on which these pistes rely is at risk as global temperatures rise. In the Alps, for example, snow imbricate has dropped to levels that are “unprecedented” in the past 600 years.
We study the potential impact of climate transpiration on the snow supply risk to ski tourism at the scale of the unshortened European ski tourism market. The map unelevated shows the 18 regions the study covers, where the rings indicate the total surface zone of ski pistes for each region.
Snow imbricate is the key ingredient for ski tourism and there are multiple ways to translate snow data into information relevant for the operations of ski resorts. This requires a definition of the suitable conditions for operations in a given year and how statistics need to be computed to assess climate transpiration risk.
For example, a typical tideway is to trammels whether snow depth exceeds 30cm for at least 100 days, but this offers limited relevance when it comes to written for the variability of snow conditions within the ski resort, with and without snow management.
For ski resorts, operators need to know how commonly they can expect to squatter snow-scarce conditions, rather than just the stereotype value of snow they receive each year.
In our study, we first estimate the fraction of the surface zone of a ski resort with a sufficient value of snow on a given day – typically, 20cm of “groomed” snow (that is, snow that has been packed and levelled by a vehicle).
We then summate the stereotype of these daily values over the period from December to February. This is tabbed the “snow reliability index”, which we summate for each ski resort.
We pinpoint snow-scarce conditions as the worst 20% of years in terms of groomed natural snow encountered during the reference period of 1961-90 – the golden age of the minutiae of most ski resorts in Europe. This 20% threshold value is specific to each individual resort.
We then quantify the climate transpiration risk well-expressed snow supply to ski tourism as the frequency of winter seasons with a snow reliability alphabetize lower than the threshold value.
Decline in snow conditions
We use a dataset initially ripened for the Copernicus Climate Transpiration Service (C3S) mountain tourism meteorological and snow indicators (MTMSI) – as described in an earlier study – combined with extensive geospatial modelling of ski resorts. We find that, in a warming climate, snow conditions ripen systematically, but not uniformly, wideness Europe’s ski resorts.
Indeed, while snow conditions decline increasingly or less in line with the value of warming, the potential impact on snow reliability at individual ski resorts varies profoundly from one mountain range to flipside and within each mountain range.
Without snowmaking, 53% and 98% of the 2,234 ski resorts studied in 28 European countries are projected to squatter a “very high” risk of low snow imbricate under global warming of 2C and 4C, respectively, whilom pre-industrial levels.
Snowmaking can lessen this impact substantially. Assuming that a resort implements snowmaking over half of its pistes, the respective impact falls to 27% and 71%.
However, this would be accompanied by an increase in demand for water and electricity for snow production, increasing the financing and stat footprint of ski resort operations.
In addition, tent half of a resort with the worthiness for snow production does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with substantially improved snow conditions in a warmer climate. And increasing water and energy requirements goes versus efforts to reduce the environmental impact of tourism.
Furthermore, the presence of snowmaking equipment does not guarantee that it can be used when needed – for example, if temperatures are too warm.
Burning embers and snowy peaks
The icon unelevated summarises our findings by region wideness Europe in the form of a “burning embers” graphic versus variegated levels of global warming. Each region has four bars, with the left-hand bar showing natural snow only and the three bars to the right showing variegated levels of snowmaking unperformed coverage.
The snow-supply risk in the urgent embers graphic is measured by the frequency of snow-scarce winters. The baseline risk level of 20%, based on warming of 0.6C for the reference period, is classed as an “undetectable change” in risk level.
From there, a frequency of 30%, respective to a 50% increase in the frequency of snow-scarce conditions compared to the reference value (20%), is referred to as ”moderate” risk (yellow), while a doubling in the frequency (40%) is referred to as ”high” risk (red).
The risk reaches the ”very high” (violet) domain at a frequency of 50% and above, respective to snow-scarce levels seen at least once every two years, which was only encountered once every five years during the reference period.
The circles exhibit relative changes in water demand for snowmaking compared to the reference period. The darker undecorous shading indicates a larger increase in water demand, while red shading indicates a reduction.
In relative terms, the increase in the risk to snow supply with global warming, without snowmaking, is comparable wideness regions – but it starts from very variegated baselines.
Taking snowmaking into account, the situation shows increasingly contrast. For some mountain areas – mainly in the Alps, but moreover in the Nordic mountains and in Turkey – spare snowmaking reduces the risk of snow scarcity. However, the marginal goody decreases, expressly between 50% and 75% (block a in the urgent embers figure).
For other areas, snowmaking has a positive impact on the risk level up to a unrepealable point. However, increases in the snowmaking coverage vastitude 50% reduces its efficiency and the risk increases (see woodcut b). This includes pistes in the Pyrenees and Carpathians.
Last, in some areas, the risk level quickly reaches upper values with increasing global warming level, regardless of the snowmaking unperformed coverage (block c). This includes the British Isles and Iberian mountains.
Environmental impacts
On a European scale, under the theorizing of strained snowmaking tent 50% of pistes, snow production requires virtually 100m cubic metres of water per year for the reference period 1961-90. This represents an stereotype of 13% of the yearly precipitation (rainfall and snowfall) reaching the slopes equipped for snowmaking.
(Here we focus on the 12 main countries in terms of the total snowmaking amount, comprising 95% of the ski resorts’ surface zone considered in this study.)
We find that water demand changes substantially in a warmer climate, both in terms of the total quantity and its seasonal distribution.
For a 50% coverage of strained snow, our projections indicate an overall increase in yearly water demand of 8% to 25% at 2C of warming, depending on the country, and by 14% to 42% at 4C. This is driven mainly by mountain regions where climate conditions remain sufficiently unprepossessed for snowmaking at least occasionally during the winter season at a sufficiently upper elevation.
For example, this is the specimen for the pistes in woodcut a of the urgent embers graphic, which includes the Nordic mountain regions, Turkey and most of the Alps.
We moreover find a unstipulated subtract in water demand for snowmaking in November due to increasing temperatures leading to fewer time periods that are suitable for snowmaking.
In general, electricity consumption and the stat footprint evolve in similar proportions. For the reference period, we estimate snowmaking used virtually 300 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity annually, producing approximately 80,000 tonnes of CO2e – although this varies profoundly from one country to flipside depending on how their electricity is generated.
We project this will reach 93,000 tonnes of CO2e per year at 2C of warming and 97,000 tonnes of CO2e at 4C.
Impacts of ski industry
Our study, withal with several previous studies, pinpoints the hair-trigger role of snowmaking in interchange the magnitude of the impact of climate transpiration on snow conditions in ski resorts.
Addressing the incubation of snow conditions in ski resorts under a warmer climate should absolutely take snowmaking – routinely implemented by ski resorts – into account.
Our tideway enables us to quantify some of the environmental impacts of snowmaking, but not all. For example, disturbances to local ecosystems for snowmaking infrastructure, such as the megacosm of local reservoirs, are probably one of the most hair-trigger aspects to take into worth for local decision-making.
Although it can vary substantially at the local scale, we find a modest influence of snowmaking on the overall electricity demand and stat footprint of ski resorts.
However, snowmaking cannot be uninfluenced from the broader tourism sector. Transportation and housing play a far greater role in the stat footprint of ski tourism destinations, and snowmaking epitomises the considerable rencontre between climate transpiration version and mitigation in the ski tourism industry.
It remains a joint rencontre for this industry and, increasingly generally, the authorities responsible for preserving mountain societies and ecosystems, to make a meaningful contribution towards decarbonation to stem global warming, while moreover adapting to the risks of a waffly climate.
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