The change of our climate
Rain. For five days. Up to 2600 meters above sea level. End november.
Climate change is something really abstract. It is far away. In the future. Or maybe in Bangladesh, a land we do not really care about if it is not for cheap t-shirts or sneakers.
Could it be, that in Switzerland we are already dealing with the consequences of climate change? A lot of people still do not believe in man-made global warming. Even politic leaders.
But what we are seeing the last few days is maybe more than a usual discrepancy of the local weather. I am sitting here in Saas-Fee, on 1800 meters above sea level and it is raining for five days now. At that time, I did not see a single snowflake. We expected a lot of snow in the higher region of the skiresort. And luckily, in Saas-Fee you have some of the highest ski slopes in the alps. There is a high chance, that we will have some nice pow turns up on the glacier tomorrow
But up to like 2000 meteres – sometimes even up to more than 2600 meters, it was raining. At the end of november. Just one week after we had really low temperatures in and in most skiresorts in Switzerland the snow canons oparated at full capacity. I was in Grindelwald that time, for a report about the snowmaking process on the legendary Lauberhorn downhill course. I asked the senior of the snowmaking team, if he is happy about the current cold temperatures. «Of cause», he answered. But he also said, that the last 30 years there is a huge change in the weather for early winter: «Since the 1980′s we have more and more warm periods. With rain up to high regions in november and decemember. Even in January.» One of those warm periods killed one race of the other FIS-Worldcup-Events in Adelboden in january 2016.
All the snow is gone again in Zweisimmen (near Gstaad/Switzerland). The Pistenbully has to wait for another half meter of snow.
Luckily for us, Saas-Fee (Switzerland) has some of the highest ski slopes in the alps. On the glacier there is plenty of fresh snow now.
The last five days the north side of Switzerland experienced one of the longest «Föhn»-periods ever recorded. In most skiresorts, which already had open slopes on the last weekend, most of the snow is gone again. On the other hand, we have regions south of the alps, like the Tessin, were over 300 millilitre of rain came down since monday. In north Italy, some municipals already fight against the flood.
Can we use this extreme weather the last few days as the proof of the man-made climate change? No, of cause not. But we see more and mor anomalies like that. And we have a lot of signs that we are already in a huge process, which affects most people on this planet.
Just to give you a few examples:
2016 will be the warmest year ever recorded. As it was 2015. And 2014. Since 1880 scientists are reporting the annual temperature around the planet. In the top 10 of the hottest years ever recorded we find just years between 1998 and 2015.
In the arctic, a lot of the polar ice is gone. NASA-experts say, 90 percent of the older polar ice disappeared since 1984. Yes, right: It disappeared in just 30 years! What remains is young, less tough ice, which melts away every summer:
NASA-timelapse of satellite pictures show the change of the polar ice between 1984 and 2016.
If you are not already convinced by the affect of a man-made climate change, you should propably give Leanardo DiCaprio a try. He recently made a pretty good movie about the effects of climate change:
Scene from the movie «Before the flood»: The guy from the Titanic-movie meets the guy from the White House.
Picture of me skiing. Because it is acually a skiing related blog. But also because in the alps, we had to wait six weeks last year to finally get some powder snow.
Now, it is really time to go skiing again soon.
