{"id":23138,"date":"2020-07-08T16:59:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T13:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/is-the-ski-industry-self-destructive\/"},"modified":"2020-07-08T16:59:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T13:59:00","slug":"is-the-ski-industry-self-destructive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/is-the-ski-industry-self-destructive\/","title":{"rendered":"#Is the ski industry self-destructive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Is the ski industry self-destructive?<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\n Snowmaking in Obertauern, Austrian Alps. Credit: Arne M\u00fcseler
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March 5th. The government of Iceland was the first to declare Ischgl ski resort, in the Austrian Alps, a coronavirus risk area after a group of Icelandic skiers returned home infected. Nicknamed the “Ibiza of the Alps,” Ischgl is a hub for apr\u00e8s ski party culture and attracts 500,000 visitors every winter. The resort has so far been linked to 2,000 coronavirus cases in six European countries. The provincial government of Tyrol, where Ischgl is located, is currently facing a lawsuit brought by individuals for having mismanaged the crisis. The will to remain open as long as possible has contributed to the spread of coronavirus, which ultimately led to the canceling of the full season. This unintentional self-sabotage for marginal gain is interestingly parallel to the short-sighted ways in which the ski industry often tries to adapt to climate change.<\/p>\n

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The ski industry is highly vulnerable to climate change. It relies on snow and ice, “which respond quickly to very slight changes as they are sensitive to the freezing level at 0\u00b0C,” Nacho L\u00f3pez-Moreno, from the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology, a research institute on climate variability, told GlacierHub. It is worth noting that the equation “more heat equals less snow equals less money,” is a simplification, he explained. Other factors including weather and economic context are key to the success of a ski season. Still, the general<\/a> rule is that a ski resort requires a threshold of 30 cm of snow cover and a minimal annual operation of 100 days to remain economically viable. Although artificial snowmaking has reduced dependency on natural snow conditions, this is not always sufficient. Recent projections indicate that an increase of global mean temperature of 1\u00b0C, 2\u00b0C, and 4\u00b0C would reduce areas available for skiing and snowmaking by 18 percent, 57 percent, and 87 percent, respectively. Moreover, glacier retreat and permafrost melting decrease the stability of infrastructure and mountain slopes.<\/p>\n

To face climate change, ski resorts can do little other than addressing the symptom\u2014low snow cover\u2014through short- to medium-term solutions. Making snow, transporting it, elevating ski lifts; all of this can protect winter tourism in the next 30 years or so but “depending on scenarios and the elevation of the resort, it all falls into maladaptation at some point,” Lo\u00efc Giaccone, who has studied the impact of climate change in mountain regions at Paris-Saclay University, told GlacierHub. As snow guns, which are used to mechanically produce snow, require temperatures below 5\u00b0C to operate by projecting water into the cold air, they only delay the problem. Some alpine resorts are already up to 80 percent artificially snowed. “Parts of the Pyrenees are almost at full adaptive capacity in terms of snowmaking, so any small increases in temperature would threaten their activity for good,” L\u00f3pez-Moreno explained. This heavy reliance on maladaptive snow guns, whose operation produces carbon emissions, as opposed to long-term transformations, is much like the poor tradeoff many resorts made this year with COVID-19. Instead of long-term stability, they’ve chosen marginal immedia<\/a>te profits.<\/p>\n

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