Since 1961 there has never been so little snow in Austria as during this year’s Christmas holidays. Geosphere Austria discovered this during an evaluation of the snow cover during the Christmas holidays over the past 60 years, it said on Friday. “On average, only 35 percent of the Austrian area was covered in snow during the last Christmas holiday,” said Marc Olefs, head of the Climate Impact Research Department at Geosphere Austria (formerly ZAMG).
According to the experts, the reason is a combination of natural fluctuations and long-term global warming. “During the Christmas holidays, from December 24 to January 8, 2023, so little of Austria was covered in snow as never before in this period since 1961,” said Olefs.
Only the holidays in 1987/88 and 2013/14 were equally low
“In comparison, on average over the past three decades, 70 percent of Austrian territory was white during the Christmas holidays. The snow cover during the Christmas holidays was just as low as this year, only in 1987/88 with 39 percent snow and in 2013/14 with 40 percent.”
Combination of natural fluctuation and long-term global warming
“Winters have become warmer in recent decades, which is why there is more rain than snow, especially at low altitudes,” explains climate expert Olefs. “But you have to take into account that the winters in the Alps also bring very strong natural fluctuations, from year to year and over several years to decades. Therefore, even in times of prolonged global warming, short periods with a lot of snow are still possible. This year we see the opposite extreme: when the effects of progressive global warming and a natural phase with less snow coincide, it results in a snow situation during the Christmas holidays that we have not experienced in the last 60 years.”
The SNOWGRID-CL model was developed at Geosphere Austria for area evaluations of the snow situation. Highly accurate terrain data is combined with, among other things, snow, precipitation and moisture measurements from several hundred weather stations and the laws of snow physics. Data such as snow depth, structure and distribution of the snow cover, snow water value and average snow temperature are calculated for the whole of Austria with a spatial resolution of one by one kilometre. This results in a total of 84,000 data points in Austria. Data is available for all days from 1961.
Fresh snow is announced
According to the meteorologists, the lack of snow should be over in the coming days: fresh snow will arrive on the mountains of Austria and partly also in the lowlands in the coming days. For the time being, however, the weather from the west will remain rather changeable with a strongly fluctuating snow line, according to Geosphere Austria.
Source: Krone
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