Climate models predict shortened ski season in the Alps

Feb. 16 (UPI) -- Researchers in Switzerland say the Alps may lose 70 percent of their historic snow coverage by the end of the century. The diminishing snow totals will likely be accompanied by a shortened ski season.

The predictions, published this week in the journal The Cryosphere, come in the wake of a disappointing December for skiers in the Swiss Alps -- the driest in 160 years of record-keeping.

Because snow is affected by two variables, temperature and precipitation, each affected by global warming in different ways, predicting the influence of climate change on snowfall totals is difficult. Increased winter precipitation could simply fall as rain instead of snow.

To improve on snowfall models, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, EPFL, and the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, SLF, decided to project snow coverage in the Alps under a variety of future precipitation and temperature scenarios.

"We used meteorological data and many different climate change scenarios to model the future snow cover in two Alpine catchments," Sebastian Schlögl, a researcher at SLF, said in a news release.

Researchers powered their projections with ALPINE3D, an open-source computer model programmed to simulate the distribution of snowfall totals in the mountains.

As detailed in their report, their simulations revealed reduced snow coverage "for all elevations, time periods and emission scenarios."

The most drastic loss of snow coverage is likely to occur at elevations below 1,200 meters, or 4,000 feet. Almost 25 percent of ski resorts in the Alps are located entirely below this demarcation line.

"Since many Alpine villages are heavily dependent on winter tourism, the economy and society of regions with such tourism centres will suffer," said Schlögl.

Changes in snow coverage will also affect regional hydrology patterns.

"This will not only impact the ecology, but also the management of water for irrigation, power production or shipping," Schlögl added.

Due to the prolonged period of carbon emissions over the last century, a significant portion of global warming is inevitable, but efforts to curtail emissions and slow global warming could prevent the most drastic projections from materializing.

"The fact that we lose 30 percent of the Alpine snow cover with the 2 degrees Celsius global warming scenario is sad, but at the same time encouraging compared to the 70 percent loss when we go on with business as usual," concluded Christoph Marty, a research scientist at SLF.