Fake snow at dried-out ski resorts creating 'cycle' of damage with chemicals and water waste

Fake snow machines being used to cover dried-out slopes at ski resorts across Europe are causing further environmental harm by wasting thousands of litres of water and covering the landscapes with chemicals, experts have warned.

One academic told i snowmaking was an example of modern life failing to adjust to the realities of climate change as it tries to supplement the ever shorter and warmer skiing season.

Popular ski resorts, which have been deprived of snow this season due to warm weather and rainfall, are increasingly relying on machines to create artificial snow in order to keep running.

So serious is the problem that the skiing world cup, in the Swiss village of Adelboden, will be held on artificial snow on 7 and 8 January.

The problems also mean British families are turning their backs on winter skiing breaks, with one family telling i how they have resorted to horse-riding in France due to the lack of snow for skiing.

Using snow cannons to cover mountains with so-called “white gold” can have dire consequences for the environment as they require vast amounts of water just to cover one slope.

Carmen De Jong, a professor of hydrology at the University of Strasbourg in France, said: “Snowmaking is a maladaptation to climate change since it tries to artificially prolong the ever shorter and warmer winter season at the cost of the alpine water cycle and ecosystem. The warmer the climate, the more artificial snow is produced and the more water is consumed.”

Developed in the 50s, snow cannons and snow guns are basically “tiny ice pellet-making machines”, said Dr Madeleine Orr, a sport ecologist at Loughborough University London.

They work by blasting compressed air through a nozzle into water, a process that then ejects small ice crystals. Their pellet shape differs to natural snowflakes.

But for just two feet of fake snow across one acre, equivalent to one ski run at a big resort or a bunny hill for children, 70,000 litres of water is required to feed the machine, estimates Dr Orr.

“Pulling water for snowmaking can be an extraordinary strain on the natural environment as the water has to come from somewhere. Snowmakers will say most of the water comes from on-site reservoirs, and that’s true, but that water would’ve flown into groundwater or rivers if it hadn’t been trapped for the purpose of snowmaking.”

It is an even bigger strain on natural resources in unusually warm or dry years like many countries have just experienced.

As the climate changes and snowfall becomes less reliable in the coming decades, ski resorts reliant on tourists will increasingly depend on snow machines to supplement what nature has provided.

Research from the University of Basel in Switzerland showed some resorts will have to drastically increase their water consumption to operate snow machines in more extreme conditions.

In the Snowmaking in a warmer climate study, published in the International Journal of Biometeorology, the authors cite research that “water consumption for snowmaking in the European Alps is estimated to increase between 50 and 110 per cent” by the end of the century.

Drawing on their analysis of a single ski resort in Switzerland, the researchers found that by the end of the century, it could be using 540 million litres of water during an average winter, compared to 300 million litres today.

Dr Orr also points out that artificial snow can, unlike the natural version, leave a footprint on the soil and grass it covers.

“It is often laced with chemicals that help it to freeze. It tends to melt more slowly than natural snow. So, come spring, when it melts, the artificial snow will ‘stick’ longer than natural snow would.”

Prof De Jong agrees that fake snow “alters [or] destroys vulnerable high altitude soils”.

“Due to the very hard, dense and heavy artificial snow that stays for long periods on the ski runs, the soils beneath suffer from oxygen depletion and become very impermeable. These impermeable soils cause heavy erosion, including gully erosion in steeper runs. They are depleted of fauna and flora since they cannot survive in these compacted soils.”

On top of snow machines degrading the alpine landscape and causing noise pollution, Prof De Jong said they require large amounts of energy to pump groundwater.

“Also [there are] high diesel emissions from snowgrooming machines… Large ski resorts have 20 to 25 snow grooms working all night and every night.”