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.
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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.
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