I’m not going to discuss the inevitable apocalypse with the attendant thunderstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, but whether we like it or not (pun intended) the Earth’s climate is heating up at an alarming speed and faster than ever before. As someone who has skied all their life I’m interested in the facts about global warming and how it will affect ski weather and snow levels. Last season had some of the biggest snowfalls ever – check this clip which demonstrates the current snow levels trend.

During the next hundred years there could be a maximum increase of up to 6.4°C in global temperatures, which is about five times the increase during the whole of the twentieth century. Many people reckon that snow levels will go down as rain takes over, but this is not definitely the case.

Let’s look in the simplest way at how the climate affects our ski weather. We’ll call rain and snow ‘precipitation’. Water vapour or hot wet air rises up from the equator, warmed up by the sun. This water vapour forms the vast circular weather systems in both hemispheres as it cools and drops down, moved along by the earth’s rotational forces.

North of the equator, for example, the major weather systems make their way from west to east on account of the earth’s rotation and precipitation mostly takes place as these systems hit the land. As the moist air in these systems hits Europe and North America, it is forced upwards by the landmasses, cools and drops as either snow and rain.

Commercial Break: Make the best of Ski Weather – Improve Skiing Fitness – Buy a Bike

So if the climate gets hotter there will be increased precipitation in these areas as the sea will evaporate more readily. But will it be snow or will it be rain? This is the question. If the temperature will be 6.5°C higher by the end of the century we can say that the height where rain changes to snow will progrees up a mountain about 1000 metres during this time. This is because the temperature falls by about 6.5°C per 1000 metres of altitude. We are going to get increased preciptation and the altitude where rain turns to snow will be going up the mountain by about ten metres a year.

So it appears there may be a few years left yet, and I’ll sign off by throwing this little snippet into the algorithm. As the world warms up the Greenland icecap will melt even faster. It is not fully understood what this will do to the Gulf Stream. Presently, this fast moving current of warm seawater, coming up from the Equator, keeps the western coast of Europe relatively warm. But thirteen thousand years ago a freshwater lake in Canada stopped the Gulf Stream dead when it overflowed its banks, dropping into the Atlantic and starting the last Ice Age in Europe. The same thing could happen if the accelerated melting of the Greenland icecap pours a massive amount of cold freshwater into the Gulf Stream and clunk – it switches off. Then we would have more blizzards than we bargained for…

For the full article and more visit Ski Jungle – Global Warming Facts