Development of summer skiing days in Austrian glacier ski areas in the first two decades of the twenty-first century

Abstract

Summer skiing on glaciers is a leisure activity highly dependent on natural factors like weather and glacier conditions. While the literature agrees that climate change is shaping the fate of summer skiing, longer time series covering both the supply and demand side of glacier/summer skiing, and research that combines natural and non-natural factors affecting the summer ski market are missing. To close this research gap, we conducted a detailed supply-side analysis of nine Austrian glacier ski areas focusing on the number of operating days (in the summer half-year, as well as for meteorological and astronomical summer ski definitions), show how these numbers evolve over time, test how they correlate with meteorological and glaciological data using time-series regression models on a yearly and monthly basis, and highlight how managerial decisions come into play when trying to explain the summer ski supply’s decline. Between 2002 and 2019, summer ski operating days in Austrian glacier ski areas declined by 48.3% in the summer half-year, 65.2% in the meteorological, and 62.3% in the astronomical summer parallel to rising mean temperatures and shrinking glaciers. This decrease is strongest in June to September and weakest in May and October but in two glacier ski areas, the operating days in the summer season remain constant or are even on the rise. This is in line with model results indicating that meteorological and glaciological data only explain parts of the variance of the decline trends. Operators’ agency, strategies, and decisions play an important role underlining that global warming is not monocausally determining summer ski operation.

The Tourism Adaptation Classification (TAC) framework: An application to New Zealand's Glacier country

“…The 5th IPCC (2014) Assessment Report expressed adaptation as a priority to cope with the effects of, and the processes involved in adjusting to, the current and future effects of climate change (Meyer et al, 2014). It is not surprising therefore, that in the context of glacier tourism, adaptation has been critical for the survival of glacier destinations over the past few decades (Fischer et al, 2016;Lemieux et al, 2018;Salim et al, 2021a,b;Mayer and Abegg, 2022).…”

“…These have included techniques to preserve the glacier itself, either by slowing glacial retreat or installing equipment to maintain a specific experience. This has included artificial snowmaking (Mayer and Abegg, 2022;Steiger et al, 2022), snow harvesting (Oerlemans et al, 2017), and the use of protective white geotextile blankets during the melting season to increase the glacier's albedo-thereby significantly increasing the amount of solar radiation reflected and slowing ablation (Fischer et al, 2016;Senese et al, 2020;Huss et al, 2021). Another adaptation strategy is the regular maintenance or upgrade of glacier access, predominantly achieved through the installation of infrastructure.…”

La fabrique de la protection

“…(Fischer et al, 2011). Les études montrent que les bâches sur glacier réduisent en moyenne la fonte de la neige de 60 % (Mayer, 2012). Cette pratique n'est toutefois pas sans conséquences.…”

The exceptional year of 2022: “deathblow” to glacier summer skiing in the Alps?

“…We recently correlated the summer ski operating days of all Austrian glacier ski areas (GSAs) with meteorological and glaciological data using time-series regression models (Mayer and Abegg, 2022). The results show that the decline in the number of operating days is related to climate change but cannot be explained with higher temperatures and shrinking glaciers only.…”

“…It is not surprising though that glacier tourism was seriously affected by this record-high glacier melt. In this research note, we focus on glacier summer skiing, roll forward existing time series data from Austria (Mayer and Abegg, 2022) to include the last three seasons (i.e., 2020-2022) and provide a comparison in the number of glacier ski operating days across the Alps for selected years (i.e., 2011, 2018, and 2022). Further, we analyze the implications for and the reactions of the operators and discuss whether a tipping point has been reached regarding glacier summer skiing in the Alps (see Figure 1 for some impressions).…”