Credit: © ISTOCKPHOTO / ARTBOYMB

If recent trends are any indication, climate change in the coming decades will hit the Austrian ski industry hard, with artificial snowmaking unable to keep pace with an anticipated decline in natural snowfall.

Using economic and meteorological data gathered during the winters of 1973 through to 2007, a team led by Christoph Töglhofer of University of Graz in Austria assessed how snow conditions at 185 of the nation's ski areas affected hotel occupancy1. If, over the course of a winter, the number of days with at least one centimetre of snow on the ground dropped by about 12 per cent below average, hotel stays decreased by 0.6 to 1.9 per cent, which at current rates of tourism equals about 300,000 to 800,000 fewer overnighters for that ski season.

But from the late 1990s through to 2007, the tourism-stifling effect of a snow-poor winter almost disappeared, a trend that might be attributed to the proliferation of artificial snowmaking at many of the resorts. The short-term technological success in bolstering the ski industry may not prove effective much longer, though. In a separate study, Robert Steiger of the University of Innsbruck used regional climate models to estimate future ski-season length and snowmaking requirements for three areas in western Austria2. At resorts near Innsbruck, where the average ski slope lies at about 1,500 metres, today's snowmaking equipment, which requires temperatures of −5 degrees Celsius or lower to function, can generate enough artificial snow to produce an economically viable 100-day ski season only until the 2030s. Resorts with slopes at higher elevations may remain relatively safe until the end of the century, although artificial snowmaking for those regions will be costly, the study suggests.