Australia’s snow season has begun to melt away early as unseasonable warmth cuts snowfalls to almost half the average for this time of year, experts say.
A global-heating fuelled early blast of spring weather means the season may have peaked early, with snow fields melted by warm temperatures and washed away by showers.
The season had a slow start in June before a big dump in July pushed the key gauge at Spencers Creek up to a healthy snow depth of 124cm.
But persistent high heat has melted that down towards 100cm, almost half the historical average, according to Australia National University climate scientist Georgy Falster.
“I grew up skiing at Perisher and … two metres in August was very normal,” she said. “That’s what you would expect.”
Snow depths had fallen on average since records began in the 1950s and seasons would continue to end earlier as global heating continued, Falster said.
On the ground, snowfields and tourists have melted away faster than usual, according to Ryan Backhouse, who works in a snowboard rental shop in Jindabyne, near New South Wales’ Snowy Mountains.
“The snow is not looking too crash hot,” he said. “We’re in August and we’re supposed to have our peak snow depth but we’ve got [field] coverage looking quite bare.”
The early spring warmth had trees and flowers blooming and locals walking around the normally chilly Jindabyne in shorts and T-shirts, Backhouse said.
Nearby Thredbo Village faced a string of days above 10C in August, well above the ski town’s long-term average high of 6.7C for the month.
Similar warm weather last year forced lower-altitude ski resorts to close weeks early and this year’s season is racing towards a similar end, according to climate scientist David Karoly, who is a councillor with the Climate Council and an avid skier.
The potential for consecutive years of early snowfield closures had locals, businesses and visiting workers worried, Backhouse said.
“There’s a bit of optimism that there’s snow coming in the next couple of weeks, but it certainly weighs on people,” he said. “If the season did end up finishing early, it would be pretty catastrophic for a lot of people that came down.”
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Some ski lifts in NSW’s Perisher Valley have already closed well ahead of the traditional season end at the start of October, Falster said.
Ski resorts have turned to machine-made snow to keep the field operational and the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting snow across alpine sites in Victoria and NSW in the coming week.
But current climate forecasts indicate that shorter winters and rising temperatures will continue to cut snowfalls and shorten ski seasons across Australia.
“We won’t have to wait very long until there won’t be natural skiable snow,” Karoly said.
An ANU report commissioned by advocacy group Protect Our Winters found the average length of ski seasons is set to fall from the current 105 days to 81 by 2030 and just 70 days by 2050, even if greenhouse gas emissions are cut radically.
The report also showed local towns, tourism industries and ecosystems relied on the snowfields and could struggle to survive if snowfalls continued to slide away.
Sam Beaver, policy lead at Protect Our Winters, said alpine communities and industries needed more government support to adapt and become less reliant on shrinking snowfields.
“Unless we get on top of climate change, unless we start getting coordinated action to adapting to climate impacts in the alpine, we’re going to see some negative impacts,” he said.
“It’s pretty devastating to go out there and see what it’s like.”