Climate change exacerbates snow-water-energy challenges for European ski tourism

Abstract

Ski tourism is a substantial component of the economy of mountainous regions in Europe and highly vulnerable to snow scarcity, which increases due to climate change. However the climate change snow supply risk to ski tourism has not been quantified in a consistent way throughout Europe, including the influence and environmental footprint of snowmaking. Here we show that the snow supply risk to ski tourism increases with global warming level, heterogeneously within and across mountain areas and countries. Without snowmaking, 53% and 98% of the 2,234 ski resorts studied in 28 European countries are projected at very high risk for snow supply under global warming of 2 • C and 4 • C, respectively. By contrast, assuming a snowmaking fractional coverage of 50% Operating costs

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“…But problems with snow conditions in Slovenia at low elevations already occurred in the past, which can also be associated with the results shown in Bertalanič et al, 2018), there will be only a few ski areas left in the decades to come -even using artificial snow, as confirmed by a study on 2,234 ski resorts in 28 European countries (François et al, 2023). This trend was also estimated by a Pan-European study on meteorological and snow indicators of climate change impact on ski tourism (Morin et al, 2021).…”

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Impact of globalization and climate change on tourist destinations. A case study in Romania

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