Warming threat to snowfields' future

Canberra Times

Rosslyn Beeby
Saturday, 16 September 2006

Climate change is happening faster than expected in Kosciuszko National Park, with snow cover in some areas already reaching low levels that the CSIRO predicted were not likely to occur until 2020, a leading scientist says.

Dr Ken Green, an alpine ecologist with the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service, said declining snowfalls meant less meltwater, and would inevitably lead to conflict between irrigators and ski-resort operations over the use of scarce water resources for artificial snow-making.

"There is so little water up there at the moment because of poor seasonal snowfalls, and if the current trend persists over the next few years, there will be conflicts over the best use of a scarce resource.

"The Eucumbene dam is only 26per cent full, which is an extraordinary situation for this time of year," he said.

Dr Green, a founder of the Australian Institute of Alpine Studies, has been conducting research in the Kosciuszko region for 30 years, and is the only scientist working full-time on assessing the impact of climate change on Australia's biggest alpine snowfield.

He said meteorological records for 2006 showed snowfalls in Kosciuszko National Park were among the three worst on record . This year's spring thaw was also one of the earliest and quickest he had witnessed.

"It's climate change - all the evidence overwhelmingly points to it," he said.

"The number of bird species in the mountains during the first week of September is what you'd normally expect at the end of a seasonal migration in mid-October."

Dr Green said snow-depth measurements at Whites River Valley, at over 1700m, were well below the average predicted.