European ski resorts struggle due to lack of snow as 2023 begins with record temperatures

The mild weather in the French Alps and the Pyrenees has seriously disrupted the activity of alpine ski resorts, leading to the closure of half of the slopes in France. Picture: Jeff Pachoud/ AFP via Getty Images

The new year has barely begun but already weather records are being broken across Europe thanks to a heatwave likely “supercharged” by human-induced climate change.

Most of the continent was significantly warmer than average on New Year’s Day as warm air from the tropics blew north.

In fact, much of central Europe experienced what felt like a mild summer’s day, as record January temperatures were recorded.

The heatwave is “yet another ‘sore thumb’ record that sticks out by a huge margin” and has been “supercharged by human-induced warming of the climate system”, said Peter Thorne, professor of Climate Change at Maynooth University. 

“I was amazed that vast swathes of central Europe — if you stopped the clock after the first of January — would have had their warmest year on record,” he said. 

In the depths of winter, you’re having days that are warmer than the average day in the year, it’s quite stark.” 

Patches of rock and grass were visible yesterday in some of Europe's top ski destinations in France, Switzerland and Italy.

Meteo France says the southern Alps and, in the northern Alps, slopes above 2,200 meters, have seen close to normal snowfalls.

But snow is notably lacking at lower altitudes in the northern Alps and across the Pyrenees, it said.

France recorded temperatures of almost 25C on Sunday, with more than 100 local records broken. In Switzerland and Poland, temperatures failed to drop below 19C in some areas during the early hours of Sunday.

Belgium recorded its hottest December day on Saturday in the town of Diepenbeek at 17.5C, exceeding the previous national record of 17.2C recorded in Brussels in 1953 and 1989.

Average temperatures in Germany were above 15C and Belarus broke its January record in Visokaye by 4.5C, reaching 16.4C.

Mr Thorne said the weather was consistent with expectations for climate events in a warming world, but it was “too early to say whether this would have been impossible without climate change”, and any research to say so definitively could take months.

However, he said his “assumption is that [this heatwave] would be impossible without human-induced climate change”.

He said it was probably too early for plants to respond to the heat by emerging too early from the winter, but some may prematurely flower and become endangered by frost in the coming months.

A forecast of mild temperatures in the coming weeks is also set to curb demand for gas after a year strained by pressures from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and EU sanctions on Russian gas.