Climate change and the impact on U.S. ski resorts
Climate change and the impact on U.S. ski resorts
By Carter Bilodeau
JRN 100 News Reporter
Ski resorts in America
have been a staple of winter vacation destinations for millions of Americans
for generations. However, as the world climate crisis grows larger and larger
every year, The ski seasons have been slowly shortening from season to season.
As a result, Ski resorts are losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year
and could potentially go into irrelevancy by as early as 2050.
“I think, in fact, it's
already threatening ski resorts. I don't think that this is a future. I think
it will continue to be an issue in the future, but I don't think it's limited
to what will happen down the line. I think we're already seeing a lot of the
impacts of, of climate change on the ski industry,” said chair of Environmental
Sciences & Studies and associate professor of environmental science at
Stonehill College, Kristin Burkholder
Burkholder attributes
this change the general warming of our climate as she explains is that the
season itself is shortening. She says,
“We know that times of
the year that used to have precipitation falling as snow it's now falling as
rain and so of course the snow totals overall are decreasing as more of our
precipitation comes as rain,” said Burkholder.
A
2019 study titled, How
climate change is damaging the US ski industry,
was conducted by Dr. Daniel Scott, a
professor and research chair in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management
at the University of Waterloo, and Robert Steiger, the associate director of
the Department of Public Finance at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
In their study, they observed how the changes in
temperature due to climate change shortened the average number of days these
resorts could stay open. They estimated that from the year 1979 to 2019, the
average number of ski days decreased by 3.7% which is around 5.5 days.
If the same trend in temperature change continues,
the study predicts that by the year 2080 could shorten the ski season by over
90 days which in turn would cause devastating losses to the entire American ski
industry.
It is estimated that Ski resorts annually lose
around 250 million dollars and over the last two decades, over five billion
dollars.
Skiers and Snowboarders around the U.S. have
expressed a growing concern for the future conditions of these ski resorts and
are weary of the future of the winter sport. Andrew DeSimone, a Sophomore at
Stonehill College in Easton MA has expressed his deep concern with the changing
conditions.
“I started skiing when I was a little kid, and
back then it snowed a lot more,” DeSimone said in an interview.
He then went on to say that he would ski from as
early as November to March but,
“In the past few years, it barely snowed at all,
and if it does, it isn’t before January,” said DeSimone.
“For me, the season starts a lot later,” said DeSimone.
DeSimone is not alone in his thoughts about the
change in ski conditions. He said,
“All of the other skiers I know have had the same
problem,” said DeSimone.
For skiers in DeSimone’s position, it is very
difficult to go skiing with the change in the earth and threatens to make
seasons even shorter making it hard for people like DeSimone to go skiing as
much as they want.
The Ski industry requires innovation that can revitalize the resorts
affected which is giving rise to snowmaking.
At the current time, snowmaking is very expensive and only big companies
have access to the best equipment available. However, with the increase in the
need for professional snowmaking, mountains aim to spend more money on
snowmaking in hopes of keeping their business alive and keeping the sport of
skiing and snowboarding from going extinct.
With the threat of global warming, professional snowmaking has become
vital in the success of these mountains now and in the future of the industry.
Even with snowmaking however, climate change will always be a problem
for the industry and the world.
“Humans are responsible for what's going on, ow that we're in the 2020s.
we know for sure that what is happening with the climate is that humans have
changed our climate system,” said Burkholder.
However, she said that there are many ways humans as a whole can help to
save the ski industry as well as slow or even stop climate change as a whole,
“The first thing of course, is the thing that everybody should be trying
to do, which is trying to lower their own carbon footprint… you can do that in all the ways you've probably
been hearing from since middle school, like try to walk try to ride your bike,
you know, things like that, where you're actually reducing like the amount of
carbon that you put in the atmosphere,” said Burkholder.
“A big one that individuals can work on as well as changing the way that
they eat. So we know that a lot of meat for example, is super carbon-intensive
to be able to produce and to be able to consume and so doing things
intentionally like cut down on the amount of meat in your diet is a really
great one as well.” said Burkholder.
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