Alps' Skiing Season Now 38 Days Shorter Than In 1960; Artificial Snow Comes To The Dolomites
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From 1960 to 2017, the Alpine snow season shortened by 38 days—starting an average of 12 days later and ending 26 days earlier than normal. Europe experienced its warmest-ever winter in the 2015–16 season, with snow cover in the southern French Alps just 20% of its typical depth.
Last December was the driest in 150 years of record keeping, and the flakes that did manage to fall didn’t stay around long. The snow line—the point on a slope at which it’s high enough and thus cold enough for snow to stick—is about 3,900 ft., which is a historic high in some areas. But worse lies ahead as scientists predict melt even at nearly 10,000 ft. by the end of the century.
All this is doing terrible things not just to Alpine beauty but to Alpine businesses—especially ski resorts. Globally, the ski industry generates up to $70 billion per year, and 44% of all skiers—and their dollars—flock to the Alps. Imagine the Caribbean culture and economy without beaches and water; that’s the Alpine culture and economy without snow.
The difference is that you can’t make an artificial ocean, but you can make artificial snow, and ski resorts all over the world rely on it. Nowhere is that reliance more urgent than in the Alps, and nowhere in the Alps is it more poignant than on the slopes of the Dolomites, an Alpine range of 18 peaks in northern Italy. In 2009, the Dolomites were named a World Heritage Site by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for their beauty, their complex geomorphology and their scientific significance.
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http://time.com/italy-alps-climate-change/?xid=homepage
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The northern town of Corvara during a recent winter
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A trail on a denuded mountain leads down to a lodge
