The famed ski resorts of Europe, in the Alps and in Scandinavia, are facing a limited future due to the rising temperature of the Earth’s surface, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
And resorts at lower altitudes are facing an even bleaker future, according to lead researcher Hughes Francois, a researcher at France’s National Institute for Agronomics Research. He explained that while the higher-elevation resorts might stretch out their time with artificial snowmaking, at lower altitudes it won’t work economically. He told French media that “Snowmaking involves investment and operating costs that expose resorts to economic failure risk.”
The report estimates that even if anti-warming efforts succeed in holding climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which is a big if, a third of Europe’s ski areas would still be ‘highly vulnerable’ to snow scarcity. Europe accounts for about half of the world’s ski areas.
