Alps hit by two-decade decline in snowfall

Paris (AFP) May 21, 2008
A forthcoming study has added to worries that the Alpine ski industry will be badly affected by global warming, the British weekly New Scientist reports on Wednesday.

A "dramatic step-like drop" in the amount of snow falling in the western European mountain chain occurred in the late 1980s and since then snowfall has never recovered, it says.

The evidence has been compiled by researcher Christoph Marty at the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research.