Articles | Volume 11, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-517-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-517-2017
Research article
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16 Feb 2017
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 16 Feb 2017

How much can we save? Impact of different emission scenarios on future snow cover in the Alps

Christoph Marty, Sebastian Schlögl, Mathias Bavay, and Michael Lehning

Data sets

Alpine3D simulations of future climate scenarios CH2014 S. Schlögl, C. Marty, M. Bavay, and L. Michael https://doi.org/10.16904/12

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Short summary
We simulate the future snow cover in the Alps with the help of a snow model, which is fed by projected temperature and precipitation changes from a large set of climate models. The results demonstrate that snow below 1000 m is probably a rare guest at the end of the century. Moreover, even above 3000 m the simulations show a drastic decrease in snow depth. However, the results reveal that the projected snow cover reduction can be mitigated by 50 % if we manage to keep global warming below 2°.