Climate Change, Environment, Europe, Headlines

CLIMATE CHANGE: Europe’s Endangered Ski Resorts

Julio Godoy* - Tierramérica

BERLIN, Feb 3 2007 (IPS) - Ski lovers in Europe are joining the list of those hurt by global climate change. This year the northern hemisphere winter is seeing moderate temperatures and little snowfall – and is looking more like springtime.

Numerous winter sports events scheduled for European venues have been postponed or cancelled, such as the Tour de Ski, a new cross-country ski championship organised by the International Ski Federation, to begin Dec. 29 in the central Czech town of Nove Mesto. The lack of snow forced postponement and a relocation to an artificial track in Olympic stadium in Munich, Germany.

At France’s Val d’Isère and Switzerland’s St. Moritz, downhill World Cup competitions were called off due to lack of snow. At the German ski resort Todtmoos, it hasn’t snowed in nearly a year. And temperatures are so unseasonably warm, that flowers began to emerge in December, as if an early spring had come.

All of this seems to confirm the predictions of numerous experts about the effects of global climate changes, especially for winter sports and Europe’s ski resorts.

One new scientific report, “Climate Change in the European Alps”, published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), predicts that by 2050 most of the glaciers in the Alps will have disappeared, and most of Europe’s ski slopes along with them.

The report stresses that in the Alps, which are “particularly sensitive to climate change”, the rate of warming is triple the global average rate.

“The years 1994, 2000, 2002, and particularly 2003 have been the warmest on record in the Alps in the past 500 years,” states the report, adding that climate models predict “even greater changes in the coming decades, including a reduction in snow cover at lower altitudes, receding glaciers and melting permafrost at higher altitudes, and changes in temperature and precipitation extremes.”

The study finds that 57 of the 666 ski areas in the Alps – or nine percent – are already suffering the effects of climate change. If average winter temperatures increase one degree Celsius, that total would jump 25 percent. The four-degree warming predicted by most climate change research over the next century would mean that 70 percent of the ski resorts could not operate, and only 202 would have natural snow.

One of the authors of the report, Shardul Agrawala, told Tierramérica that the areas of the Alps most affected by global warming are in Austria and Germany, and that only the largest and highest-altitude ski areas have a chance to survive the climate catastrophe.

Among the ski resorts considered most vulnerable is Kitzbühel, located in a valley of the south-western Austrian region of Tyrol, some 800 metres above sea level. In contrast, the French ski area Val Thorens, at 2,300 metres above sea level, enjoys renown for the constant presence of snow on its slopes.

Over the Christmas holiday, Kitzbühel opened only 10 of its 54 lifts because there was so little snow. The resort had to make artificial snow in order to make its runs ski-able.

But according to German political scientist Frank Kürschner, an expert in the subject, artificial snow has “horrendous” environmental costs.

“To produce enough snow to cover one square meter requires 100 litres of water,” Kürschner told Tierramérica. “And a canon to spray it over the ski runs consumes 13,000 kilowatts per hour per hectare. That’s the equivalent of the annual energy consumption of a four-member family in an industrialised country,” he added.

The OECD report supports his claims, though states them more subtly: “Snow-making has proven cost effective, but such estimates are based only on the direct financial costs to ski operations and do not include the potential externalities of such practices on water consumption, energy demand, landscape, or ecology.”

Furthermore, says Agrawala, “as temperatures rise, snow-making costs will rise disproportionately, and if global warming reaches a certain limit, artificial snow simply will not be viable.”

Although the report makes recommendations to the governments of Alpine countries affected by climate change, Agrawala says the report’s findings are practically unavoidable, and the predictions apply to mountainous regions similar to the Alps, such as in North America, Australia and New Zealand.

(*Originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)