Extract from ABC News
The sight of grassy slopes at Australia's ski resorts this winter has been the stuff of nightmares for skiers, snowboarders and mountain lovers.
Key points:
- Researchers analysed 2,234 ski resorts across 28 European countries to assess changes in snow cover at less than 2C and less than 4C of warming
- The modelling measured the potential impacts of artificial snowmaking, which requires heavy water and energy use
- Since the 1950s in Australia, climate change has resulted in a long-term decline in the maximum depth and duration of the snow season
It is also a stark reminder of the impacts that human-induced climate change is already having and a warning of what is to come, according to a study modelling the impacts of a warmer world on ski resorts in Europe.
Europe is home to about 50 per cent of the world's ski resorts, which depend on reliable and predictable snow cover.
The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that 53 per cent of European ski resorts were projected to be at very high risk of a lack of snow supply with less than 2 degrees Celsius of global warming above pre-industrial levels.
It found that 98 per cent of resorts would be at very high risk with less than 4C of warming.
Global temperatures sit at 1.2C above pre-industrial levels and an analysis from Carbon Brief shows the world will reach 2C of warming between 2038 and 2072 if emissions remain close to current levels.
The study's lead author, Samuel Morin from France's National Centre for Meteorological Research, said the modelling accounted for geography, elevation and regional differences.
"We found that if we don't account for snowmaking, the conditions will get worse … because there is a wide snow decline because of the warming," he said.
"When it's warmer, snow tends to be replaced by rain in precipitation and the snow melts quicker."
Dr Morin said "very high risk" was a metric based on how often bad seasons would occur, rather than on average snow conditions.
"What matters is how often they experience challenging conditions like snow-scarce, snow-poor winters, and how frequently that happens," he said.
"It's a bit like a heatwave — it doesn't matter much to say that the temperature has increased by one or two degrees locally, on average.
"The question is how frequently you get those extreme, high events.
"What we call 'very high risk' is when we reach that shift from a once-in-five years event into once-in-two years events — so basically going from 20 per cent to 50 per cent of the winters that have those challenging conditions."
Artificial snow's catch-22
One way for ski resorts to shore up conditions is to make artificial snow, but doing so increases water and energy use.
The researchers used models to quantify the potential impacts of artificial snowmaking and found the practice could reduce the number of resorts at very high risk to 27 per cent under the 2C mark and 71 per cent of those under 4C.
But it would come at a cost.
"On average it's about 20 per cent higher water demand for 2C global warming and like 30-40 per cent water demand increase for 4C global warming," Dr Morin said.
"And that goes together with energy and carbon emissions for snowmaking."
He said the ski industry and governments had some big questions to contemplate.
"Something we address in that particular paper as well is what is the impact of ski resorts and ski tourism on climate change and it goes way beyond the emissions due to snowmaking," Dr Morin said.
"It's mostly transportation, it's mostly housing, and so that's the key issue that we point to in the paper as well — how sustainable that is, and how can ski resort managers, but also the authorities of those mountain areas … combine adapting to climate change while at the same time reducing emissions."
'Booms and busts'
In Australia, climate change has resulted in a long-term decline in the maximum depth and duration of the snow season since the late 1950s, according to the Bureau of Meteorology's 2022 State of the Climate report.
It said "the largest declines" came "during spring and at lower altitudes".
"Downward trends in the temporal and spatial extent of snow cover have also been observed," the report said.
"The number of snowfall days has also decreased. Years with persistent heavy snow cover have become rare."
Omar Elkadi from climate advocacy group Protect Our Winters said focusing only on snow depth could mask some of the bigger problems.
"If you look at the snowfall rates say 50 years ago, we used to get a lot more smaller top-ups, which built the base over time," he said.
"But recently, what's happened … we call them Snowmageddon … we get these massive fronts come through, and they drop a huge amount of snow, often, because they're so strong," he said.
"With climate change, what we're starting to see is we aren't getting those smaller top-ups in between, so you have these booms and busts.
"There will be some great days to come, of course, but as they get warmer, the margins of error are just becoming finer and finer.
"The booms will be slightly less and the busts will be slightly more prevalent."
Mr Elkadi said 2023 looked set to be the worst year in terms of snow depth since 2006, when Australia recorded its lowest depth on record.
He said Australian resorts had done a good job of managing the snow this year, but the lower altitude resorts were struggling.
"Ask a snow-maker if you're out there about this year, because they've just had so few nights to pump out snow, because the wet bulb temperatures were too high, the humidity was too high — it was simply too warm," Mr Elkadi said.
"That's the scary thing for those low resorts, because they can't actually rely on the snow-making sometimes — it's a pretty bleak outlook for some of those resorts."
As in Europe, Mr Elkadi said how Australian resorts managed water and energy use was a big question.
"Snow-making reduces the variability that we're going to get from climate change for the ski resorts so they can effectively operate in the right way and provide a product for their customers," he said.
"But of course, it's so energy intensive and so water intensive and that diverts water away from ecosystems as well if not managed correctly."
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