Global warming threatens to shorten ski season and reduce snow cover in Alps: study

If left unchecked, climate change will shorten ski seasons and dramatically reduce snow cover in the Swiss Alps, scientists warn in a new paper which found that the region experienced the driest December since record-keeping began more than 150 years ago.

The prognosis is grim: The Alps cold lose as much as 70 percent of its snow cover by the end of this century if climate change is not curbed, warn scientists from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale of Lausanne and the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) in a recently published paper.

Likewise, their research also shows that the Alpine winter season -- defined as the period when the snow is deep enough for winter sports -- is poised to shorten dramatically.

The ski season, for instance, could start half a month, to a full month later than it does now, scientists say.

In addition to the driest December on record, 2016 also marked the third year in a row that the Swiss Alps experienced scarce snow over the Christmas period.

For their research, scientists simulated future snow cover in the Alps using temperature and snowfall projections in relation to different global warming scenarios.

"The majority of the climate models used project slightly increasing winter precipitation towards the end of the century," said lead author Christoph Marty in a statement.

"However, since temperatures are clearly increasing simultaneously we may experience increasing rainfall and not snowfall. We hope our results convincingly show that even increasing winter precipitation cannot compensate for the effect of the strongly increasing temperatures."

The finding were published recently in The Cryosphere, a journal of the European Geosciences Union.

Rising temperatures and increased rainfall would not only impact ski season and tourism in the area, but it would also alter water flow and volume into Alpine creeks and rivers, scientists warn.

Despite the grim warnings, researchers add that the effects of climate change can be mitigated if humans work to limit global warming to below 2C.

Under that scenario, snow cover loss would drop from 70 to 30 percent by 2100.

"The fact that we lose 30 percent of the Alpine snow cover with the 2C 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," Marty said.