A new survey has suggested that the poor snow start to the
season is going to be a more common feature of ski seasons
as global warming takes hold.
A shorter season?
According to France Meteo, the climatic
changes could reduce the length of the season by up to 20%-40%
within 50 years.
'We simulated a rise in temperature
of 2 degrees (the average predicted rise for Northern Europe
into 2050)', explained Eric Martin, head of the Snow Study
Centre at Meteo France in Grenoble. 'The impact will be
significant for resorts at a average altitude of 1500m,
with a possible reduction of a month in the effective length
of the season'.
EDF (Electricite de France) has come
to similar conclusions in their own study to predict the
effect on future water flows of any reduction in snowfall.
They suggest that a reduction of 30 to 60 days in snowcover
at 1500 meters.
Effectively a barren December and
April would become typical in most resorts within a generation
and only in higher resorts would the season remain largely
unchanged.
Could this year's poor start to
the season be due to global warming?
Not so, according to Frederic Hendrickx,
from the National Laboratory of the Environment at EDF.
The data collected so far 'do not deliver a clear signal
over the duration'.
Eric Martin, from Meteo France, disagrees:
'There has been a small downward trend over the last forty
years. There is a chance that this is related to global
warming caused by human activity'.
The Nineties were the hottest decade
of the century. The UN current research estimates that the
global surface temperature will increase by 1.5 to 6 degrees
by 2100.
Something to think about the next
time you drive to the corner shop…
[Main body of story from AFP Paris]
