Up to half of Switzerland's ski resorts are facing ruin because of global warming, and low altitude resorts in Austria, Germany and Italy expect to have no snow within a decade. "We don't expect to have snow in low lying resorts such as Klosters for more than the next 10 years," Werner Schmultz, a professor at the World Radiation Centre, based in Davos, Switzerland, said last month.
"Our research suggests that since about 1980 the temperature increase from solar activity was steeper than ever. We estimate that 50 per cent of this is as a result of greenhouse gas emissions. "We can already measure climate change, and the rate of change will increase in the future. Politicians have a chance to realise this, and if they don't want to, it is deliberate ignorance."
As the Winter Olympics opened in Turin last week, and with more than a million Britons taking ski holidays this year, global warming is forcing the winter sports industry to act. However, it is now building even higher in the peaks and on the glaciers to ensure that skiers have guaranteed snow and a longer skiing season. This is having serious ecological effects.
The temperature in the Alps is showing distinct signs of warming and this is affecting the whole ecology in this region," says Sonja Wipf, a scientist at the Davos-based Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research. Wipf says that last year the entire blueberry crop in the Klosters and Davos area was wiped out. "The spring frosts are arriving later and later and this causes serious damage to many plants at a crucial stage of their development," she says.
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