The Ski and Snowboard Industry is Terrified

Last winter, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) held just over 600 events across disciplines, at 166 venues. They canceled 26 of them because of weather — lack of snow, rain, and other hallmarks of a warming world. The industry is, justifiably, quaking in their ski boots.

“Ruined winter vacations and cancelled sports fixtures are – literally – the tip of the iceberg of climate change,” said World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, in a press release announcing the first ever United Nations/WMO partnership with a sports organization. FIS and WMO together want to “raise awareness of the fact that winter sports and tourism face a bleak future because of climate change.”

The noise around winter sports seems to be getting louder in a hurry. The International Olympic Committee is already straining to find suitable hosts for the Winter Games, recently awarding the 2030 and 2034 events to the French Alps and Salt Lake City, respectively, while admitting that climate change “will be a great challenge for us.” Glaciers, upon which many ski resorts and other winter sports rely, are retreating rapidly all around the world — so much so that countries are even redrawing their borders to account for the changing landscape. At the high end of potential warming scenarios, as many as 98 percent of European ski resorts would not have enough snow cover without substantial snowmaking. It is a bleak, rocky future.

The WMO-FIS memorandum of understanding commits the organizations to a broad range of activities generally intended to spread the word on the risks the winter sports industry faces. The first is already set for November 7, when more than 100 national ski associations along with venue officials and event organizations will take part in a webinar going over climate change’s potential impacts.

“Retreating glaciers, reduced snow and ice cover and thawing permafrost are having a major impact on mountain ecosystems, communities and economies,” Saulo said, “and will have increasingly serious repercussions at local, national and global level for centuries to come.”