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Ski tourism plays a major role in European mountain areas such as the Alps, Pyrenees, Scandinavia, Turkey, Eastern European Mountains etc. Meteorological conditions govern the operating conditions of ski resorts, due to their reliance on natural snow fall and favorable conditions for snowmaking. However, there is currently a major lack of assessment of past and future operating conditions of ski resorts at the pan-European scale in the context of climate change. The presented work aims at filling this gap, as part of the ongoing development of “European Tourism” Sectoral Information System (SIS) of the Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S). C3S is run by the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) on behalf of the European Commission. The Mountain Tourism Meteorological and Snow Indi-cators (MTMSI) are derived using statistical adjustment of EURO-CORDEX climate projections (multiple GCM/RCM pairs for several RCP) using the UERRA 5.5 km resolution surface reanalysis as a reference, followed by snowpack models runs using the Crocus multi-layer model, with and without snow manage-ment options (grooming, snowmaking). Results are generated by 100 m elevation bands for NUTS-3 geographical areas spanning all mountainous areas in Europe. The resulting data can be aggregated in time and space in various ways, depending on the use case. The presentation quickly introduces the un-derpinning elements for the generation of this product, and illustrates results at the pan-European scale as well as for smaller scale case studies, for past and future climate conditions. The data will be made available freely through the Copernicus Data Store starting in 2019. It is expected that the data and the tools developed within this project will not only make it possible to analyze the climate sensitivity of ski tourism in Europe as a topical yet academic research question, but would also help third-parties in devel-oping climate services specifically targeting the sk

Climate change is increasingly regarded as a threat for winter tourism due to the combined effect of decreasing natural snow amounts and decreasing suitable periods for snowmaking. The present work investigated the snow reliability of 175 ski resorts in France (Alps and Pyrenees), Spain and Andorra under past and future conditions using state-of-the-art snowpack modelling and climate projections using Representative Concentration Pathways RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The natural snow reliability (i.e. without snowmaking) elevation showed a significant spatial variability in the reference period (1986–2005) and was shown to be highly impacted by the ongoing climate change. The reliability elevation using snowmaking is projected to rise by 200 to 300 m in the Alps and by 400 to 600 m in the Pyrenees in the near future (2030–2050) compared to the reference period for all climate scenarios. While 99 % of ski lift infrastructures exhibit adequate snow reliability in the reference period when using snowmaking, a significant fraction (14 % to 25 %) may be considered in a critical situation in the near future. Beyond the mid-century, climate projections highly depend on the scenario with either steady conditions compared to the near future (RCP2.6) or continuous decrease in snow reliability (RCP8.5). Under RCP8.5, our projections show that there would no longer be any snow-reliable ski resorts based on natural snow conditions in the French Alps and Pyrenees (France, Spain and Andorra) at the end of the century (2080–2100). For this time period and this scenario, only 24 resorts are projected to remain reliable with snowmaking, all being located in the Alps., This study was funded by Région Rhône-Alpes (PhD grant of Pierre Spandre), and benefited from funding from the French Ministry for Ecology (MTES) to the ADAMONT project through GICC and ONERC, from the Interreg project POCTEFA/Clim'Py (OPCC2), from the IDEX Univ. Grenoble Alpes Cross Disciplinary Project “Trajectories”, and from the Conseil Départemental de l'Isère – Isère Tourisme. The CGET – Comité de Massif Alpes funded the creation of the BD Stations database. CNRM/CEN and Irstea are part of LabEX OSUG@2020 (ANR10 LABX56). Deborah Verfaillie's work has been funded by the European project EUCP (H2020-SC5-2016-776613). We acknowledge useful comments and suggestions from O. Cenk Demiroglu, Robert Steiger, one anonymous reviewer and the editor Jürg Schweizer., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

Ski tourism plays a major role in European mountain areas such as the Alps, Pyrenees, Scandinavia, Turkey, Eastern European Mountains etc. Meteorological conditions govern the operating conditions of ski resorts, due to their reliance on natural snow fall and favorable conditions for snowmaking. However, there is currently a major lack of assessment of past and future operating conditions of ski resorts at the pan-European scale in the context of climate change. The presented work aims at filling this gap, as part of the ongoing development of « European Tourism » Sectoral Information Service (SIS) of the Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S). C3S is run by the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) on behalf of the European Commission. Such an endeavor requires combining state-of-the-art meteorological reanalysis with regional climate projections, followed by the application of a snowpack model accounting for grooming and snowmaking. Emphasis will be placed on the workflow making it possible to analyze the data with various levels of aggregation (from daily data to annual scale indicators, to their statistical moments accounting for multiple climate scenarios and lead times), in order to address the needs of various stakeholders, at the European, national, regional and local scales. The data will be made available freely through the Copernicus Data Store in various ways (download of raw data, download or graphics based on post-processed information accounting for user specific needs). It is expected that the data and the tools developed within this project will not only make it possible to analyze the climate sensitivity of ski tourism in Europe as a topical yet academic research question, but would also help third-parties in developing climate services specifically targeting the ski tourism industry in Europe. This contribution introduces the scientific background and general strategy for generating the products, and delivers preliminary info