Impacts of climate change on ski industry

Abstract

Ski industry has become one of the main economic activity for many mountain regions worldwide. However, the economic viability of this activity is highly dependent of the interannual variability of the snow and climatic conditions, and it is jeopardized by climate warming. In this study we reviewed the main scientific literature on the relationship between climate change and the ski feasibility under different climate change scenarios. In spite of the different methodologies and climate change scenarios used in the reviewed studies, their findings generally point to a significant impact of climate change on ski industry caused by a reduction in the natural availability of snow as well as a contraction in the duration of seasonal conditions suitable for ski. It emphasizes that the problem is real and should not be ignored in the study and management of tourism in mountain regions. However, there were significant differences in the impacts between different areas. This differences are mainly associated to the elevation of the ski resorts, their infrastructures for snowmaking and the various climate models, emission scenarios, time horizons and scales of analysis used. This review highlights the necessity from scientist to harmonize indicators and methodology thus allowing a better comparison of the results from different studies and increase the clarity of the conclusions transmitted to land managers and policy makers.Moreover, a better integration of the uncertainty in the model´s outputs, as well as the treatment applied to the snowpack in ski slopes is necessary to provide more accurate indications on how this sector will respond to climate change.

Ski Tourism and Web Marketing Strategies: The Case of Ski Resorts in France and Spain

“…Rising temperatures are beginning to affect the scheduling of activities. A lack of snow means that the ski season starts ever later; the seasons themselves are more unstable; they are also longer since they tend to finish later [10][11][12]. One published article finds that measured snow-depth is a significant predictor of skier days in French ski areas [13].…”

Sustainability and Mountain Tourism: The Millennial’s Perspective

“…Several winter and summer mountain sports were investigated by researchers based worldwide [59][60][61], and their papers focus on a wide range of subjects, i.e., sport tourism events and their economic impact [62,63], climate change and winter sports [64,65] or health aspects of sports activities in mountain regions, such as high altitude illness [66][67][68][69][70][71], thrombosis and pulmonary embolism [72], hand injuries [73,74] or facial traumas [75,76]. Moreover, some studies list many sports activities that can be practiced in mountain areas in winter and summer, such as mountaineering, climbing, downhill skiing, alpine skiing, ski mountaineering, hiking, cross-country biking, mountain racing, paragliding, canyoning and snowboarding [75,[77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85].…”

Daily gridded datasets of snow depth and snow water equivalent for the Iberian Peninsula from 1980 to 2014

“…Snowpack influences the interannual variability of water resources (López-Moreno and García-Ruiz, 2004) and the timing of the winter low flows and spring peak flows (Sanmiguel-Vallelado et al, 2017). Moreover, winter tourism (mainly skiing) has been increasingly important to the economy of mountain valleys in recent decades, and the large interannual fluctuations of snowpack in the different mountain regions of the Iberian Peninsula affect the economic viability of tourism (Gilaberte-Búrdalo et al, 2014, 2017.…”