Climate change will wipe out Quebec skiing, study predicts
Sean Gordon Quebec Bureau Chief
2008/02/09 04:30:00
MONTREAL–The powder hounds' prayers have been answered with a pair of February snowfalls, but even a thickening blanket of the white stuff can't bury the grim truth about one of Quebec's favourite winter pastimes.
A vast climate study is predicting the ski season in southern Quebec will shorten dramatically – perhaps by as much as half – over the coming three decades, with even sharper changes in store beyond 2040.
"There will be a marked reduction in the duration of the ski season over the coming years, especially in more southern regions," wrote the study's principal authors, professors Bhawan Singh and Christopher Bryant of the University of Montreal's geography department.
According to a summary of Singh's analysis published by the university last month, warming effects mean "the skiable season could go from four months to fewer than two months. And even making artificial snow won't really help. To make snow, you need the mercury to fall below zero."
December was the second snowiest month on record in Montreal, with more than double the average monthly snowfall measured since the 1940s, but January told a different story, with 11 days of temperatures above freezing.
That's part of a long-term trend that foreshadows potentially devastating consequences for Quebec's $600 million ski industry.
Bryant first began measuring the impact of climate change on agriculture in the early 1990s. Singh sat on the intergovernmental climate-change panel that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
The implications are also clear for ski enthusiasts in New England and Ontario: As the planet warms, people will have to travel farther afield to find reliable ski conditions.
In southern Quebec, average winter temperatures have risen between four and five degrees since the 18th century, the study showed.
There are 84 major ski resorts in Quebec, although the 15 largest, mostly located within an hour's drive of Montreal, haul in 70 per cent of the business. "Some places are more vulnerable than others," Bryant said in an interview.
The three biggest ski resorts in the province – Mont Tremblant, Mont Sainte-Anne and Le Massif – should continue to thrive because of their altitude and the fact they are in more northern latitudes.
Indeed, there are plans afoot for a $230 million expansion of Le Massif, which is in the Charlevoix region northeast of Quebec City.
But in the Eastern Townships, home to the province's oldest downhill ski runs, the situation will grow increasingly perilous.
Weather statistics show 55.6 centimetres of snow fell on the Montreal area in January, compared with 112.8 centimetres in December, with a mean temperature of about half a degree warmer than in 2007.
The region around Montreal received about as much rain as it did snow in January (of 99 millimetres of total precipitation, 55.6 was rain or sleet, according to Environment Canada's preliminary readings). The picture is worse if you exclude a New Year's Eve storm that dumped 20 centimetres on the region. And in the Eastern Townships, records showed 40 per cent less precipitation in January than in Montreal and 12 days at or near zero degrees.
The results of the study on the ski industry were first released in late 2006 to Ouranos, a provincially funded environmental research consortium. But the researchers have continued to do a series of follow-up studies, which primarily consider the impact of climate change on agricultural practices in southern Quebec.
"We believe the results haven't changed; they're based on an examination of long-term trends," Bryant said.
