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Europe's going green (that's due to lack of snow)
Last updated at 09:37am on 15.12.06
The new green alps
From Lapland to Latvia and Aachen to the Alps, Europe is a winter wonderland of green.
As these pictures show, Britons hoping to experience a traditional white Christmas in Santa's homeland are in for a disappointment. Rovaniemi, a town on the Arctic Circle in northern Finland, is normally covered in deep snowdrifts at this time of the year, with temperatures going down to -20C.
But in a week when environmental experts warned that the North Pole will be the size of a domestic fridge ice cube in just 40 years, the first arrivals hoping to enjoy sleigh rides, mulled wine and snowball fights felt their spirits sag as the Mercury climbed.
A spokesman for First Choice holidays, the British tour operator that takes thousands of Britons to Lapland, said conditions were "incredibly unusual".
"We're extremely disappointed," said Michelle Gower, of Enfield, North London, who travelled to see Santa's home with a friend and three children, two aged seven, and one aged six.
"There's no snow - it's just slush and it looks ugly. There are no picture postcards here. We couldn't book up for a lot of rides as you can't do them without snow - the husky ride was cancelled. And it's warm, actually. We crossed the Arctic Circle yesterday without even a coat on, it was that warm.
"Rovaniemi just looks like a normal town - there's no snow at all," said Mark Foreman, 46, a lawyer, who travelled to Lapland with his seven-year-old son Max, from Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.
"Max had expectations of coming out of the hotel and building a snowman but there's nothing to build one with. He is disappointed. There is so much less for him to be able to do. I've had a little talk with him about global warming."
But it's not only Santaland that the snow is avoiding. In the Alps, the warm weather has meant one of the worst starts to the ski season on record. Dozens of races have been cancellled and many tourists arriving for their skiing holiday have been greeted by brown fields with not a patch of snow in sight. Last month temperatures were at times 15 degrees higher than normal. It meant that in early December, there was virtually no skiing at all.
For one race in Hochfilzen, Austria, organisers shipped in 260,000 cubic feet of snow. But many others have just been cancelled.
Many of the most popular resorts with British tourists have only limited skiing available. This week the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that higher temperatures threaten to devastate the economies of European ski-ing resorts.
Elsewhere, a 30,000 pound, 30 tonne ice sculpture of a Christmas tree in the ski resort of Klagenfurt has already melted due to the unseasonably warm weather, eight days after it was unveiled after being carved in a frozen food store's coldroom.
A local tourist office spokesman said: "In a normal winter this would have lasted two months.
And yesterday the U.N's weather agency said in its annual report on the state of the global climate that between1997-2006 the average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere was 0.53 degrees Celsius (0.95 Fahrenheit) warmer than the average for 1961-1990.
"So far the northern hemisphere is warming much more than the southern hemisphere," said expert Omar Baddour.
In the Alps, no snow will ultimately mean massive job losses. Alpine tourism plays a key role in the economies of countries with ski resorts with some 60 to 80 million tourists to the region each year, and a total of 160 million days recorded annually by ski lift operators in France, Austria, Switzerland and Germany.
But five World Cup ski races have already been cancelled this year. OPEC's warning came with the news of the cancellation of the women's slalom race in the France Alpine resort town of Megeve because of lack of snow.
Women's races in St. Moritz in Switzerland, men's and women's in Val d'Isere in France, as well as the traditional season-opener in Sölden in Austria at the end of October were also all called off.
Reader views (4)
Here's a sample of the latest views published.
Brace yourselves. This will only get worse. And it's all moving faster and harder than anyone anticipated.
- Christopher Cuttance, Christchurch, England
Probably nature is trying to send us a hint about the irresponsible behavior we all have had during the last 100 years. To that, we should add the cynical attitude of the leaders of the first world nations, which doesn't help at all in the efforts to take measures to protect our world. Corporations are responsible for all the damage that nature has suffered. They don't want to realize how much damage they're causing. By giving stupid responses like “the planet has gone through this before, it is normal and global warming is not true”, only guarantees their own destruction, which they will suffer for not taking to protect the resources they're exploiting so rapidly because of greed. Corporations move quickly to label scientists as being left-wingers or socialists. There will be a time, I'm sure, and that as our planet becomes warmer, corporations will label the protectors of nature as "terrorists". Corporations will not assume responsibility for what they do; the only thing they worry about is a fat check for their C.E.O's, C.F.O's and all the rest of the Os.
- Luis, Los Angeles, CA USA
We are dying, but we are at least doing it prettily.
- Humanity, USA
There is no such thing as Global Warming? This is a direct result of the ocean's convection. In the coming years as more Arctic ice melts and floods the ocean with fresh water, the convection will slow and the European climate will begin to cool drastically. The world can blame the US because we are the worse of the lot to increase the inevitable outcome of greenhouse gases we pour into the atmosphere every year. Being an American, I accept the fact that my government should take most of the blame.
- Tony, Columbia SC USA
