by After promising early snow dumps in parts of Europe this autumn, the pattern has repeated itself in recent years with rain and sleet taking hold.
In the ski resorts of Morzine and Les Gets in the French Alps, heavy rain delayed the full opening of the resorts until two days before Christmas, leaving the industry and millions of tourists trip planning with an eye on the sky.
But no amount of wishful thinking and hope will overcome an existential threat to skiing in the Alps, a $30bn (£23.8bn) industry that provides the world’s most popular ski destination.
The science is clear, and spelled out in carefully weighed peer-reviewed reports. The latest, this year, warned that 53% of the 28 European centers examined would be at risk of snow shortages at 2C of global warming above pre-industrial levels.
Snow scarcity is defined as the poorest coverage averaged every five years between 1961 and 1990.
If the world were to hit 4C of heat, 98% of the resorts would be at very high risk of scarce snow cover.
Another study showed how the snow cover in the Alps has decreased “unprecedentedly” in the last 600 years, with the duration of the cover now shorter by 36 days.
Some respond by thinking that skiing will and can survive if global temperatures are kept within the limits set in the Paris agreement, and if the industry adapts.
But rumblings of discontent about the lack of action to ensure the survival of the sport at the International Ski Federation (FIS) broke into the open this year.
The FIS was in the middle of a climate row in 2019 when Gian Franco Kasper, its president at the time, revealed himself as a climate denier in an interview, arguing that he would rather mix with dictators than deal with environmentalists.
He later left and was replaced by Johan Eliasch. But that did not take the heat off the federation.
This year, 500 professional winter sports athletes published a letter demanding that FIT do more climate action. They highlighted a competition schedule that forced skiers to take air flights back and forth across the Atlantic week after week, creating an unnecessarily large carbon footprint, and called on the federation to open the season later and ending earlier to respect the changing climate.
This was followed in October by a petition asking the federation to do more to tackle climate change, which has received over 35,000 signatures.
The campaign wants the FIS to publish its own environmental impact with full transparency, move the race calendar by at least one month to respect climate change, reduce the need for air travel, and use its political influence to support climate action by government governments. level.
The FIS said that as a signatory to the UN Framework for Climate Action (UNFCCC) it was committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. “We are working on a sustainability plan that will see us collect the as much data as possible during the upcoming winter season to get the most accurate estimate of our CO2 footprint.
“We have delayed the start of the season by a week and will continue to closely monitor whether we need to start the season even later.”
Dom Winter, from Protect our Winters UK, which is behind the petition, said science showed skiing deaths were not inevitable if global emissions were to be reduced and that was encouraging climate action in the winter sports community. “The future of winter sports depends on how well we reduce emissions in the coming years,” said Winter.
He added: “Certainly at 2C the lower elevation resorts would be in big trouble. But there will still be places with natural snow in the Alps, so higher altitude resorts could survive. The concern is how expensive and elitist they might be.”
Small amounts of snowmaking would help keep some resorts going, he said, especially those at lower elevations. But snowmaking at scale will never be able to replace real snow because it is too expensive and uses too much energy and water.
According to the latest study, using snowmaking to achieve 50% snow cover on a worm reduces the number of European centers at high risk of snow cover loss to 27% at 2C and 71% at 4C .
Although the same study shows that emissions from snow are small, at only 2% of the total emissions of resorts, the use of artificial snow on a scale creates problems in energy and water use.
A study at the University of Basel found that resorts located below 1,800 to 2,000 meters would have to abandon their lower slopes and rely more on artificial snow to keep their higher slopes open.
The impact of using artificial snow for up to 100 consecutive days would increase water consumption by approximately 540m liters of water and park resorts against local communities due to competition for water use.
Water consumption in the French Alps could increase ninefold by 2100 from this reliance on artificial snow, according to the study.
The Federation said that using carbon offsets alone could achieve the Paris Agreement’s 1.5c target; and created the FIS Rainforest Initiative to do just that.
So while some are pushing the industry to do more to adapt to keep the sport alive, others are working to embrace a new future rather than focusing everything on the sport alone.
In Morzine, the non-profit sustainability group Montagne Verte is working at a community level to support a move to a low-carbon future in the area.
Cécile Burton, general manager of Montagne Verte, said: “Temperatures in the Alps are rising more than twice the global average and that’s not good news for an industry that depends on snow.
“Our approach is to focus on four-season tourism in the valley and make the valley and the mountains somewhere you can live year-round.
“There is life after skiing but we have to adapt and we have to imagine what our future will look like. This is an area where you can climb, mountain bike, walk, or just be in the environment all year round.
“We need to place more value on other times of the year, not only from an environmental and sustainability point of view but from a human point of view because you can have a place where you can live all year round not you must have employment throughout the year.”
As well as working to imagine and support a new future, the group works with local politicians and industry to push for policies that reduce emissions.
The majority of emissions from skiing come from tourist flights to resorts, car travel in resorts, and energy used in accommodation, so Montagne Verte is working to convince politicians and businesses to switch to resorts holiday without cars.
The group recently took eight local mayors to the car-free resort of Zermatt in Switzerland to see if Morzine could follow where that resort has led.
The group has also successfully encouraged 100 businesses to become part of an Alpine fast pass which offers discounts on snow passes, ski guides, spa massages and yoga to people traveling on their train holidays.
Al Judge, president of luxury chalet vacation company AliKats is trying to adapt to the day the snow stops.
“We want to move the focus of our season away from winter skiing,” Judge said. “Summer is our second biggest season, but we are trying to focus on getting stronger demand for the spring and autumn holidays so that we have adapted to being a four-season business throughout year when the snow stops.”
