Snow depth in Alps decreasing by up to 8cm per decade

Up to eight centimetres less snow per decade in the Alps Keystone-SDA

In the Swiss Alps, snow depth has reduced by up to 8cm every decade over the past 60 years, according to an analysis by the Swiss Avalanche Research Institute SLF.

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Using the new Spass model (“Spatial Snow climatology for Switzerland”), researchers have calculated for the first time how the snow cover in Switzerland has changed since 1962 on an area-wide and altitude-dependent basis, the SLF, which is part of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), announced on Monday.

“This is the first time that we’ve been able to show trends over a wide area and for different altitudes,” said SLF climatologist Christoph Marty, according to the press release. “We can clearly see the consequences of climate change here.”

At up to 8cm per decade, the decrease in snow depth in the high mountain regions is significantly higher than in the already snow-poor Central Plateau, where snow depth decreased by less than 1cm per decade on average.

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The percentage losses were greatest on the Central Plateau: while a decline of around 4% per decade was recorded in the Alps at 2,000 metres above sea level, the average snow depth on the Central Plateau fell by up to 20% per decade.

The SLF used measurement data from 350 stations over the last 25 years for the model. The snow depths from November to April were analysed.

In future, the results will also be used outside of research, for example in collaborations with Switzerland Tourism and Cableways Switzerland or, in the medium term, in the White Risk avalanche app. MeteoSwiss is planning to make climatological snow information from the model publicly accessible.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

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