Television images beamed around the globe from the World Economic Forum in late January showed Davos covered by a blanket of snow that also shrouded growing concern in this and other Swiss mountain resorts.
The much-wanted powder came suddenly, in the space of a couple of days, ending an extremely mild first half of winter and reviving fears that global warming will evaporate some of the Switzerland’s economic lifeblood.
“The very unusual pattern that we’re experiencing this year may be a sign of what might happen more frequently in the future,” said Martin Beniston, a climatologist at the University of Geneva.
“It’s little bit like recent heat waves that gave us a preview of what summers are likely to be like fairly frequently by the end of the century,” he said.
Beniston is among Swiss officials and scientists warning that climate change could affect not only the key tourism industry in this scenic Alpine state — which alone generates 22-billion Swiss francs ($17-billion) in revenue for the economy — but also its energy supplies, agriculture and a multitude of livelihoods.
The scientist was also part of the team advising the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that met in Paris last week. Their report, issued on Friday, confirmed that man-made greenhouse gases are mainly to blame for driving up Earth’s temperatures.
While Switzerland shares the trouble facing low-lying countries in summer, its mountainous areas have the added headache of failing winters.
Davos is a case in point. At 1 560m altitude and a population of 12 500, it claims to be Europe’s highest town.
Its stunning surroundings of forested peaks have made it a winter El Dorado, owing fame and fortune to clean air, ski slopes and the annual January pow wow of the world’s business and political elite — where climate change was a major topic this year.
In the 1920s, German novelist Thomas Mann dubbed it “The Magic Mountain” in a book inspired by his wife’s treatment for tuberculosis in Davos’s prized mountain air.
Today, Davos is a major Alpine resort, attracting 1,3-million overnight stays in the 2005/06 winter season.
“We’ve relied on consistent snow cover, and we have relied on air quality. That’s how Davos became big, on those two things,” said Gian Paul Calonder, the town’s environmental protection officer.
The town council, like others, is taking measures to counter climate change. It found that 70% of local energy consumption, mainly heating, relied on burning fossil fuels that produce the very greenhouse gases behind the problem.
“There have always been winters that were poor in snow. What’s new is these higher temperatures,” he added.
Swiss thermometers reached four degrees Celsius warmer than the 1961 to 1990 January average this year, making it the warmest first month of the year on record, according to the Swiss meteorological service, Meteosuisse.
Apart from the highest peaks, slopes were grey and bare until late January, while spring blossoms sprouted months ahead of time.
Change is evident even in summer, when tell-tale gouges stand out on mountainsides to show how thick melting glaciers once were.
According to Beniston, warming in the Alps is on average higher than elsewhere in the northern hemisphere while winters are getting shorter.
Even snowmen are becoming scarce.
In the 1950s, low-lying plateau cities could get a half-metre of snow in one night but today rarely see half as much before it melts, Switzerland’s meteorological office said.
High towns like Davos used to get peak snowfall of more than 2m 50 years ago but today 1m is often tops. Since the 1970s, average Swiss winter temperatures have crept above the freezing mark.
Climatologists estimate that Alpine snow cover today is only reliable above 1 200m, compared with 800m four decades ago, already making life tough for low altitude resorts. And the snow line is expected to creep even higher.
“When there’s no more snow at middling altitudes, high stations will also suffer, said Hans-Kaspar Schwarzenbach, tourism chief at the well-perched eastern resort of Arosa.
Antonio Simonazzi, a spokesperson for Switzerland’s Transport, Energy and Environment Ministry, drew an analogy with low-lying islands.
“It’s clear that Alpine countries are feeling the effects of climate change maybe more than other countries,” he said, “just like Pacific islands, which face rising water levels, are more affected.”
Beniston has forecast that warmer weather conditions south of the Alps will creep northward, across what was once a natural mountain barrier.
“Switzerland is affected in vital areas,” Simonazzi said, noting “tourist regions have an economic value that we can’t neglect”.
Concern extends beyond tourism.
Dams, filled by seasonal melting snows and a key source of national energy, are also jeopardised, Beniston said.
But spring meltdowns are likely to decline, also depriving two of Europe’s biggest rivers, the Rhine and the Rhone, of water that supplies rest of the continent.
“If you don’t have these spring and early summer run-offs from melting snow, then there’s not much snow that’s going to supply the rivers and they can run almost dry, as we saw during the 2003 heat wave,” Beniston said.
Farming too will suffer. Mild winters will not allow vegetation a necessary rest, making it more fragile. “Then when you have a wind storm or an extreme weather event, the vegetation is less likely to resist,” Beniston said.
Melting permafrost poses another threat.
“There are deep valleys in the Swiss Alps. Material released from the permafrost could tumble as far as inhabited areas,” Zurich scientist Wilfried Haeberli told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper.
The Swiss government hopes to assess the impact of global warming on the national economy later this year in a report similar to one issued last November by Britain, which produced a dire warning about the cost of climate change.
Switzerland has already started levying a carbon tax on petrol, diesel, heating fuel and coal.
Little Davos, which Calonder defined as “newsworthy” once a year when the global decision-makers come to town, has set its own goal of cutting harmful carbon dioxide emissions by 15% by 2014.
“It’s not so much a question of fear, but of respect,” he said. “I think we can make use of our position to act as an example.” — AFP