Experts say there will be “fewer skiing opportunities” in 30 years due to climate change.
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00:00 Hi, I'm Isabella Bonham, a reporter for National World,
00:03 and I've been looking into how climate change will affect skiing in the future.
00:07 At the start of the year, there were shocking scenes of ski slopes without any snow,
00:11 worrying ski lovers and ski fanatics who have yet to take the slopes.
00:15 So, will climate change affect skiing in the decades to come?
00:19 Well, I've spoke to several experts to understand more.
00:23 In, say, the Alps, mostly it's fairly mild.
00:27 You can already see that the lower-lying ski areas are just gone.
00:31 My wife is Swiss, actually, and we spend time there.
00:34 The place she's from is at 800 metres.
00:37 They had their own ski area, just for children, obviously, but that hasn't opened for years.
00:43 It's very much dependent on altitude.
00:45 Any area that's below about 1,500 metres is already getting marginal.
00:51 They have to close more than they would expect to.
00:54 In 20 years, any place below 1,500 metres is probably not going to be viable.
00:58 It is definitely going to change the whole landscape in Europe.
01:02 The skiing season has shortened by about a month in the last 30, 40 years,
01:07 and that's actually quite important for the viability of the resorts
01:11 because it shortens at a very crucial time around the Christmas holidays,
01:15 which is a really important time financially for the ski resorts.
01:19 Most of the resorts now, most of their runs are artificial snow,
01:23 but that only works if it's cold enough, so that won't work forever.
01:27 It might buy a resort 10 or 20 years, but it's not going to buy it 40 years.
01:33 Sarah Burden, communications manager at the tourism office in Morsey,
01:37 spoke to me about the situation in the Alps
01:40 and whether or not the resort is concerned for the future.
01:43 The whole of the Alps has been getting warmer over the last few years,
01:47 and we are definitely seeing changes in the temperatures we are experiencing.
01:52 Some years we are having less snowfall than we would have had on average,
01:55 say 20, 30, 50 years ago.
01:58 I think anybody would be crazy not to be concerned about the future
02:01 with the changes that we are seeing happening to the climate.
02:04 There's a lot that we've been doing in Morsey to work towards that.
02:07 We don't see that skiing is going to be stopped,
02:11 or that there is going to be closure and no skiing happening,
02:14 certainly not within the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years.
02:18 However, I think we do have to be ready to adapt to that.
02:21 Professor Shepard touched on artificial snow,
02:24 and Henry John from the Ski Club of Great Britain expanded on this,
02:27 and whether or not we will be able to use it in the future,
02:30 and will skiers enjoy it?
02:33 The biggest complaint from a skier's point of view
02:35 is that it feels very different skiing on natural snow.
02:37 We will potentially see more widespread use of it.
02:40 The trouble you do have is that if temperatures do continue to increase,
02:43 artificial snow can only be created if the conditions are right
02:46 and it's cold enough to do so.
02:48 Skiing in mountains that are covered in white is very, very different
02:51 from skiing on a single chandelier amidst a sea of green.
02:53 We may well see resorts closing because they don't have access to higher terrain.
02:56 So, will we be able to ski in Europe in the future,
03:00 or will we have to resort to places such as a snowdome in Tamworth to ski?
03:05 We will still be able to ski in Europe.
03:07 It'll be a question of where.
03:09 You'll need to go high, up to resorts above 2,000 metres.
03:12 That's where you're going to still get consistent snowfall.
03:15 It might be that we see different weather patterns featuring better snow.
03:20 You may find that Austria does better in the long term than France,
03:23 but I think we still don't know enough about those patterns
03:26 to know into the future where things are going to happen.
03:29 It's going to be a case of waiting to see what happens, unfortunately.
03:32 .