FOR skiers and snowboarders there is no business like snow business. But in the Alps winter sports may be doing no business at all in years to come.
In the late 1980s, there was a dramatic step-like drop in the amount of snow falling in the Swiss Alps. Since then, snowfall has never recovered. In some years, the amount that fell on the plateau between Zurich, Bern and Basel was 60 per cent lower than was typical in the early 1980s, says Christoph Marty at the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos. He has analysed snowfall trends spanning 60 years and adds that the average number of snow days over the last 20 winters is lower than at any time since records began more than 100 years ago.
The future of winter tourism in the region is looking grim. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 believe we will see the kind of snow conditions we have experienced in past decades,鈥� he says.
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Previous studies have suggested a decline in the region鈥檚 snowfall but Marty鈥檚 analysis is the first to take in 10 years of new data from 34 stations between 200 and 1800 metres above sea level. The work will appear in Geophysical Research Letters.
It鈥檚 hard say whether this marks any kind of tipping point in terms of climate change, says Marty. 鈥淏ut from the data it looks like a change in the large-scale weather pattern,鈥� he adds.
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