Abstract
Skiers are passionate about finding the best snow conditions. Snow conditions in thousands of ski resorts around the world depend mainly on natural snowfall, particularly in the case of backcountry skiing. In various mountain ranges popular among skiers, snowfall is strongly linked to large-scale climatic oscillations. This paper reviews existing information on the impacts of several of these phenomena, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation, and North Pacific Index, on snowfall-related climate parameters in the world's major ski areas. We found that in each of the studied areas, one or more large-scale climatic oscillations affected snowfall-related climate parameters. Understanding the predictability of such oscillations is high on the climate research agenda. If this research leads to improved predictability in the coming years, this could be combined with the knowledge summarized in our paper on the relationships between climatic oscillations and snow-related parameters to provide useful information for winter sports and other snow-related fields.
Highlights
In many economic sectors, it is recognized that interannual climate variability is at least as important as long-term climate change for practical issues (Mogaka et al 2006), such as drought management (D’Arrigo and Smerdon 2008), food production (Rosenzweig and Hillel 2008), and hurricane losses and insurance (Pielke et al 2008)
Skiing regions This study focused on the following ski areas: Alps (Europe), Andes (Argentina and Chile), Canada, Japan (Hokkaido), New
The majority of the phenomena covered in this study have interannual oscillations, and the predictability of these oscillations is high on the climate research agenda
Summary
It is recognized that interannual climate variability is at least as important as long-term climate change for practical issues (Mogaka et al 2006), such as drought management (D’Arrigo and Smerdon 2008), food production (Rosenzweig and Hillel 2008), and hurricane losses and insurance (Pielke et al 2008). An improved understanding of the impacts of climate variability on snowfall could be beneficial for management purposes in skiing-related businesses and for skiers themselves to understand where there is the most potential for good snow. Various studies exist on regional and local scales on how different large-scale climatic oscillations affect snowfall, winter precipitation, and temperature (eg Brown and Goodison 1996; Aizen et al 2001; Quadrelli et al 2001; Sturman and Wanner 2001; Jhun and Lee 2004; Scherrer et al 2004; Scherrer and Appenzeller 2006; Masiokas et al 2006; Durand et al 2009a, 2009b; Bao et al 2011; Purdie et al 2011a, 2011b). Several studies examine relationships between climate variability, temperature, and precipitation (eg Ropelewski and Halpert 1987, 1989, 1996; Kiladis and Diaz 1989; IPCC 2012) or hydrological aspects such as river discharge (eg Dettinger and Diaz 2000; Dettinger et al 2000; Ward et al 2010) or drought (eg Rosenzweig and Hillel 2008 and references therein). To our best knowledge, there exists no global overview related to snowfall or snow depth
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