The Cryosphere, 13, 1325–1347, 2019 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-1325-2019 © Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Winter tourism under climate change in the Pyrenees and the French Alps: relevance of snowmaking as a technical adaptation Pierre Spandre1,2, Hugues François1, Deborah Verfaillie2,3, Marc Pons4, Matthieu Vernay2, Matthieu Lafaysse2, Emmanuelle George1, and Samuel Morin2 1Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Irstea, UR LESSEM, Grenoble, France 2Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Université de Toulouse, Météo-France, CNRS, CNRM, Centre d’Études de la Neige, 38000 Grenoble, France 3Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain 4Snow and Mountain Research Center of Andorra, IEA, Sant Julià de Lòria, Andorra Correspondence: Samuel Morin (
[email protected]) Received: 18 November 2018 – Discussion started: 20 December 2018 Revised: 19 March 2019 – Accepted: 2 April 2019 – Published: 24 April 2019 Abstract. Climate change is increasingly regarded as a threat only 24 resorts are projected to remain reliable with snow- for winter tourism due to the combined effect of decreas- making, all being located in the Alps. ing natural snow amounts and decreasing suitable periods for snowmaking. The present work investigated the snow relia- bility of 175 ski resorts in France (Alps and Pyrenees), Spain and Andorra under past and future conditions using state- of-the-art snowpack modelling and climate projections us- 1 Introduction ing Representative Concentration Pathways RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The natural snow reliability (i.e. without snow- The ongoing evolution of natural snow conditions related making) elevation showed a significant spatial variability to climate change (Beniston et al., 2018) is increasingly in the reference period (1986–2005) and was shown to be regarded as a major threat for winter tourism (Gilaberte- highly impacted by the ongoing climate change.