A Europe with less and less snow

In the Old Continent, snow is becoming increasingly scarce, with a marked decline especially in Central and Southeastern Europe. The consequences for the environment, economy, and water resources are far from negligible

(Data visualisations by Yevheniia Drozdova - Texty)

Once, the plains of Central-Eastern Europe and the continent's mountains used to evoke long, snowy winters. That image is progressively fading: the snow cover is becoming increasingly scarce and less lasting, with rare exceptions. The phenomenon has repercussions on tourism, agriculture, and water availability, but is difficult to quantify due to data scarcity and local variability. An analysis within EDJNet using MODIS satellite data, corroborated by an investigation in the meteorological archives of the ECAD network (European Climate Assets Datasets), has provided a picture of the drastic reduction in snow cover.

Decline in Central-Eastern Europe

The NDSI (Normalized Difference Snow Index) allows to distinguish snow-covered territories photographed by satellites from those with little or no snow, based on snow's great capacity to reflect visible light. The closer the value is to 100, the more likely the territory portion was rich in snow, and vice versa.
The images from the 2024-2025 winter show that, beyond the non-mountainous areas of Southwestern Europe (which are normally snow-free), countries like Hungary, Serbia, Moldova, Croatia, Poland, and Western Ukraine have had very little snow.

 

Extending the analysis to the last twenty years, it becomes apparent that the decline is far from episodic, especially among Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. The analysis, however, reveals a cyclical trend: after some winters with little snow, more snowy ones follow. The last very snowy winter in this region dates back to 2020-2021, while to find a year with extremely abundant and widespread snowfall, one must go back to 2016-2017. The number of years with abundant snow is, however, declining, and the cycle seems to be interrupting more frequently.

Snow and climate

The decline in snowfall is one of the phenomena most clearly connected to climate crisis, and at the same time, one of the most difficult to describe. "Snow cover varies enormously at a local scale", explains Gerard van der Schrier, the leader of the ECAD archive , which - coordinated by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute - has been networking data from thousands of European weather stations for 25 years. "In many cases, only temperature and precipitation records are reported while snow height is such a sensitive indicator for climate change. These data show that the plains are  precisely the areas where snow disappears more quickly than at high-elevation sites".

The trends, however, are evident. According to a 2023 study , in the Northern Hemisphere, snow persistence is reducing by 0.44 days per year. In some areas of Central-Eastern Europe, like the southern Baltic coasts and especially the Danube river basin, the retreat reaches 0.95 days per year. This - explains van der Schrier - depends on the low average elevation and the increase in temperature, which reduces the fraction of snowfall in favour of rain.  ECAD network data indicates that the average snow thickness has reduced by 12.2% per decade, with a recent acceleration. "Significantly, however, the maximum thickness, that is, of extreme snowfalls causing risks and inconveniences, declines much more slowly."

Europe is warming faster than the global average, and warming is more evident in the mountains. According to the European Copernicus observatory, January 2025 was the warmest ever recorded, with +1.75°C compared to the pre-industrial period. The temperature increase affects both the fraction of precipitation falling as snow and its ground persistence.

A fragmented picture

The snow reduction, however, is far from homogeneous. At higher latitudes, especially the Scandinavian peninsula, snow cover appears stable or even increasing. In the rest of Europe, the trend depends mainly on altitude: if at low elevations even a slight temperature variation can transform snow into rain over vast areas, the same effect does not occur in highlands, where precipitation is moreover more abundant. In the Alps and Carpathians, snow reduction decreases above 2000 meters.

Some mountainous areas of the Balkans, between North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, even see a strong increase in extreme snowfalls. This data, explains Davide Faranda, researcher director at CNRS and coordinator of Climameter (a network developed by the Paris Laplace Institute that deals with connecting extreme events and climate change), is not in contrast with the global trend: "Atmospheric humidity increases by 7% for each degree of overheating, which can mean increased precipitation and in some situations more intense snowfalls. In the Balkans, moreover - he adds - changes in atmospheric circulation more often push disturbances to that area". However, he concludes, "with continued warming, even these extreme events will decrease, concentrating more and more on the highest mountains".

Winter tourism at risk

The snow reduction has significant impacts on the environment, water resources, and economy. The most direct is on the ski industry, which in Europe represents half of global ski areas, with over 200 million ski passes sold and a business volume of 30 billion euros. Although representing a fraction of this business concentrated mainly in the Alps, ski stations in Central-Eastern and Southern Europe are essential for many local economies. A study in Nature Climate Change estimates that with +2°C of warming, 53% of the 2,234 European ski stations will be at risk without artificial snow, which in turn depends on temperature and water availability. With a +4°C increase, the risk rises to 98%. Already today, only 22% of slopes in the Balkans and 17% in the Carpathians and Apennines have sufficient snow in poor snow years. The problem is already present: in Italy, according to environmental organization Legambiente's "Nevediversa" report , 265 ski stations were abandoned in 2025, more than double compared to 2000.

Impacts on Water Resources and Agriculture

Less visible, but equally serious are the effects on water availability, with repercussions on agriculture and domestic uses. Snow acts as a natural reservoir, releasing water in spring when vegetation needs it most. A 2015 study highlights that 2 billion people depend on snow-related water basins, and Europe is no exception. The most affected areas are in the Mediterranean and southern regions, such as Spain (especially Catalonia and the Duero basin), Southern Apennines, and also Crimea. In Northern Italy, the drought that put the agricultural sector in crisis in 2022 was significantly aggravated by the scarcity of snow in the Alps. This year in Central Europe, according to the European Union's JRC research centre, snow reduction caused a water deficit from the Baltic to Bulgaria, with negative effects on crops. Moreover, the absence of snow exposes plants to frost, compromising agricultural yield.

The risk of extreme snowfalls remains

Paradoxically, while snow becomes rarer, extreme snowfalls remain a risk. Recent events, such as the 2017 cold wave (over 60 deaths in Central-Eastern Europe) and the Rigopiano hotel avalanche (29 victims) in Abruzzo, Italy, in the same year, demonstrate this. Faranda explains that the effects of some storms, like "Ciro" in 2023 which caused transportation disruptions in many European countries, are closely linked to the climate crisis. "Snowfalls at higher temperatures, often mixed with rain or ice, are often more problematic for transportation”.