How much climate change shortens the ski season
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Aspen Skiing is threatening to sue polluters for damages related to climate change, and it now has the receipts.
Why it matters: The company funded a groundbreaking research project to determine the cost of climate change to the ski industry, a baseline that could be used in court.
Driving the news: The study, published in the journal Current Issues in Tourism earlier this year, found that U.S. ski areas lost $5 billion from 2000 to 2019 due to human-caused climate change.
BFD: The damages could reach $1 billion annually by the 2050s if emissions are not curbed.
What they're saying: "Sport is often something people care about," Daniel Scott, a scientist at the University of Waterloo and study co-author, told the Associated Press. "And they can see some of these changes happening."
What they did: The researchers modeled hypothetical ski seasons from 2000 to 2019 in the Northeast, Midwest, Rocky Mountains and Pacific West — without climate change.
- The baseline is seasons from 1960 to 1979, before significant impacts materialized.
What they found: The study concluded the average season between 2000 and 2019 was 5.5-7.1 days shorter, regardless of mechanical snowmaking.
- Even if emissions are reduced, the seasons would become 14-33 days shorter in the 2050s because of lost snowfall and higher temperatures.
- A less-optimistic scenario with smaller emissions reductions would mean up to 62 days lost to climate change each season.
The bottom line: "The future of the ski industry, if that's something you care about, is really in our hands and it will play out over the next 10 to 15 years in terms of the policies and actions that we take to reduce emissions," Scott told AP.