The Guardian View on the Warming of the Alps: A Challenge for Tourism

THE GUARDIAN – EDITORIAL: Higher temperatures mean less snow snow and ice, more rockfalls and more fatalities on Europe’s overcrowded mountains. This cannot go on

The collision between industrial tourism and the climate crisis is destroying some of the very environments that have attracted so many to the high mountains in the first place.’ Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images
The Victorian writer and mountaineer Leslie Stephen – the father of Virginia Woolf – called the Alps “the playground of Europe”. And so they have been, in winter and summer alike, for many generations. But with excessive warming now placing some of the Alps’ most iconic summits out of bounds, for how much longer can the freedom of Europe’s playground continue?

The basic problem is the warming of the Alps. Snowfall this past winter – especially in the southern Alps – was down by two-thirds from what was once considered normal. The loss of snowmelt is a direct cause of this summer’s brutal drought in the Po valley. Last month, Swiss scientists found that weather balloons were having to rise to 5,184 metres (over 17,000ft), well above the very highest peaks, before they finally reached freezing point. » | Editorial | Monday, August 1, 2022