Less snow means more problems for winter sports

Ski resorts in Kashmir, and the Alps around the world, are facing a problem with snow. The solutions aren’t as simple as just waiting for snowfall. I remember when our family used to go to the Ardennes in central France for winter break when I was a child. We would spend our time skiing or sledging in the thick snow that covered the ground.

The Ardennes, which are typically between 350 and 500 meters above sea level, used to be blanketed with snow. Unfortunately, the snowy landscape of my childhood is no longer the same.

In January, the European Union’s climate research group, Copernicus, confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year on record since 1850. It was 1.48°C warmer than before the industrial age, which is dangerously close to the 1.5°C limit set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

As temperatures rise, this means that what used to be snowfall might now be rainfall. This is bad for snow cover because rain speeds up the melting of any existing snow.

This is a big problem for places in India, Europe and elsewhere that are popular for snow sports. Over the last two years, many parts of India nd Europe have had less snow than usual.

For every 1°C increase in air temperature, there is 8 percent less snow cover. So, not only is there less snow cover in many parts of the world because of rising global temperatures, but when it does snow, there is less of it.

Shorter snow seasons by 2050

By 2050, models predict that the snow season will be shorter by a few weeks and the snow height will be reduced by about 10 to 40 percent at low and mid altitudes (up to 2000m), regardless of what happens with global carbon emissions.

This severe lack of snow in the winter leads to more glacier melting in the summer. Without their snow cover, glaciers melt more easily in the increasingly warm temperatures. This means that conditions are worse at the start of the next winter for snow to build up (snow lasts longer on a cold ice surface than on warm rock or sediment).

To keep the tourism industry going, ski resorts will need to keep investing in making artificial snow and grooming the slopes more. However, this increases their carbon footprint.

In France, 80 percent of ski resorts already have snow cannons. Grooming the slopes helps to keep the skiing conditions good for longer because groomed snow is more compact and melts slower.

But these adaptations come at a cost to the climate. In ski areas, the majority of the carbon emissions come from snow ploughs (60 percent of a ski area’s total carbon emissions) and snow cannons (25 percent).

These maladaptations may fix the less snow issue, but exacerbate long-term problems by emitting more greenhouse gases. Certain adaptations, such as making snow, could quickly become futile with rising temperatures, since snow production requires air temperatures below -2°C.

In Switzerland and Italy, some ski areas go to extreme lengths to deal with problems, such as covering glaciers with white plastic tarps during the summer to help their survival and lower the demand for artificial snow in the winter. However, this solution harms plants and animals, elevates carbon emissions, and adds to microplastic pollution when the tarps deteriorate.

Ski resorts adapt, environmental impact increases

There are other major sources of carbon emissions at ski resorts, like the way visitors travel (mostly by car in the Alps) to the resort, which accounts for 60 percent of a ski resort’s carbon emissions.

For example, snow cannons use about 4000 cubic meters of water per hectare of snow, which significantly reduces the amount of water available for people, local plants and animals, and agriculture. Snow cannons are also very noisy and disturb wildlife.

Permanent reservoirs are often built to store water for making snow, which destroys the local habitat where they are built. The same is true for ski lifts and high-altitude huts. Regular grooming of the slopes compacts the snow more than it would naturally compact with successive snowfalls, so it melts more slowly in the spring. This shortens the time that plants have to grow and bloom when water is readily available.

According to the latest climate model simulations, all mountain glaciers will lose 25-40 percent of their mass by 2100. Snow cover is shrinking both in terms of amount (snow height) and duration, by about five days per decade. The predictions are pessimistic for the smallest glaciers, which are less resilient and will therefore disappear first. By 2100, we might see 94 percent of the European Alps without glaciers.

This will affect winter mountain sports. Downhill skiing, which has a heavy environmental footprint, could be replaced by winter sports with a lesser environmental impact such as snowshoeing and cross-country skiing, which don’t require ski lifts or slope grooming.

Ski resorts are already looking to diversify away from just downhill skiing, with some considering summer activities, such as hiking and mountain biking (which could also make use of ski lifts).

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