STEADILY declining snow levels in Australia could see local skiers heading overseas for their snow fix, believe researchers from Griffith University.
The University’s Associate Professor Catherine Pickering, who has researched the effects of declining snow cover and hotter summers on the Australian Alps, says snow cover is already declining in Australia’s alpine regions due to global warming, and the trend is expected to continue.
Pickering says the average snow cover at the Snowy Mountains has dropped by 30 per cent overall and 40 per cent in spring over the last 50 years.
She says the alpine region is one of Australia’s areas most threatened by climate change, and reliance on snow-making is not financially sustainable.
“We’ve predicted by 2020 to lose something like 60 per cent of the snow cover of the Australian Alps,” she says.
“Unfortunately because our current emissions and our current rises in temperatures are at the high end of the predictions, it’s definitely coming to us sooner and faster.
“In a few years the amount of water that ski resorts will need to make snow is going to exceed the amount of water that’s used by Canberra.”
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