CANBERRA, June 5 (Xinhua) — Australia’s ski season could shrink in length by over 50 percent by 2050 unless climate pollution is reduced, research has warned.
The Australian National University (ANU) and climate activist group Protect Our Winters Australia (POW) on Wednesday released a report showing that the average season length across all downhill ski resorts in Australia will fall from 105 days to 50 days by 2050 under a high-greenhouse gas emissions scenario due to warmer temperatures and reduced snow depths.
Under a mid-emissions scenario it projected that by 2050 the average season length would be 44 days shorter than the 1981-2010 average of 105 days.
It projected that under a low-emissions scenario the ski season would be 28 days shorter by 2050 before starting to improve by 2080.
Ruby Olsson, co-author of the report from the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, said that urgent action is needed to address climate change and support ski resorts and communities that depend on the Australian Alps.
“We need to support vulnerable resorts to diversify into year-round tourism. The more we can limit the impacts of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the less expensive adaptation by businesses, communities, and the environment will be and the more options we will have,” she said in a media release.
“Waiting to act increases the risk of resort closure or species extinction. Resort closures and extinctions are difficult or impossible to undo. So, this decade is critical in terms of taking urgent climate action.”
In addition to harming Australia’s ski industry, the report warned that reduced snow in the alps could affect agriculture and water security.
It found that snow-melt runoff provides an average of 9,600 gigaliters of water per year to the Murray-Darling Basin — an agricultural area that produces one third of Australia’s food supply — the equivalent of 29 percent of its total annual water flow.
At the same time the report said climate change would reduce rainfall in the Australian Alps, which span across the states of New South Wales and Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory, by 24 percent by 2050.
