A white Christmas may increasingly become a nostalgic memory as the northern hemisphere sees ever fewer snowy winter days because of climate change, with Europe warming quickest, a new report warns.
Driven primarily by humanity’s mass burning of fossil fuels, that decline in days below freezing threatens tourism, the economy and cultures, according Climate Central.
The report by the US-based research institute argues man-made climate change has caused more than a third of the 123 countries and nearly half of the 901 cities studied to lose the equivalent of at least a week’s worth of days below freezing – zero degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit – over a decade.
The report’s analysis is based on daily minimum temperatures from December to February – roughly the span of the northern hemisphere winter – from 2014 to 2023.
Those lows were then compared to a simulation of a climate without the warming effects of humanity’s widespread use of coal, oil and gas.