The year 2024 marks the hundredth anniversary of the first Winter Olympics in Chamonix in 1924, with Alpine skiing making its debut at the 1936 Games in Germany. It seems a bitter irony, therefore, that January and February 2024 saw many ski resorts without enough snow and that 2023 was officially declared the hottest year on record by a huge margin, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Average temperatures were 1.48°C hotter compared to pre-industrial levels, taking us dangerously close to the 1.5°C ‘safe’ limit set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.
This is nothing new for the Alps. Retreating glaciers have been an issue for many years and have been well documented since the turn of the twentieth century. As far back as 2007 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that nearly 10% of the ski resorts in the western Alps no longer had reliable snow, and a study published in 2004 suggests there could be a 42% fall in the number of snow-cover days in the Alps by the end of this century. Furthermore, the loss of Alpine glaciers may trigger a series of reactions that could speed up existing climate change through a positive feedback loop.
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