Nestled in the Pyrenees, La Molina is Spain's oldest ski resort. It boasts the largest superpipe in the Pyrenees and its slopes have hosted high-profile events from the Alpine Skiing World Cup to the Snowboarding World Championships. But La Molina now faces an existential threat: a lack of snow.
As global temperatures rise, the resort, like many other places around the world, is becoming increasingly dependent on artificial snow.
But fake snow comes at a price. It is both water and energy intensive - a difficult combination anywhere, but especially in a country struggling with prolonged and severe drought, fueled by climate change.
That's why over the next three years La Molina will be testing a new snowmaking technique that will be much less resource intensive, and that can also produce snow at warmer temperatures - increasingly important as some resorts approach temperatures too warm to even be fake . snow viable.
The project is called the Snow Laboratory and is run by the Barcelona Institute of Materials Science (ICMAB-CSIC) and FGC Turisme, which manages public ski slopes. The project will create fake snow by adding a mineral to the water that goes into snow cannons, the machines that pump out water and air at high pressure to create snow.
The idea is to mimic processes that happen in the clouds, says Albert Verdaguer, the scientist at ICMAB-CSIC leading the project.
Ice is formed in the atmosphere from water droplets in clouds by a process called 'ice nucleation'. Pure water droplets can remain unfrozen in clouds at temperatures as low as minus 38 degrees Celsius. But ice nucleation can occur at much higher temperatures when the water droplets interact with particles in the atmosphere, such as aerosols or dust, causing them to freeze.
A few years ago, Verdaguer read a research paper showing that one mineral - feldspar - was particularly efficient at this process and could cause water droplets to freeze at temperatures around zero degrees.
A light bulb went off: what if feldspar could help make snowmaking more efficient? "We thought: why don't we take advantage of that?" he told CNN.
During laboratory tests, Verdaguer and his team found that the technique reduced energy costs by about 30% and could produce snow at temperatures about 1 to 1.5 degrees higher than traditional methods.
They were also able to get a better "conversion rate," Verdaguer said, referring to the amount of snow coming out of the cannons relative to the amount of water going in.
Usually it's about 75%, he said, because some water remains in the gun or doesn't freeze and is blown away. The Snow Laboratory expects to increase that to 90%.
About a Coke can-sized amount of feldspar - an abundant mineral that makes up about 60% of the Earth's crust - would keep two snowmaking machines running all season, Verdaguer said.
A sector in danger
Spain is struggling with scorching heat waves and years of drought, and Catalonia, the region where La Molina is located, has been particularly hard hit. It is "one of the most intense droughts in recent years," said Ramón Pascual Berghaenel, a meteorologist at the Spanish weather agency AEMET.
But La Molina is far from the only ski resort trying to carve out a future in a warmer, drier world. An unusually warm winter last year left ski resorts across Europe snow-free, and this year resorts in the Indian Himalayas lay empty as a lack of snow kept tourists away.
"Of course there are shifts and changes year after year, but the long-term trend (for snow) is decline," says sports ecologist Madeleine Orr, who is not involved with the Snow Laboratory. A recent study shows that human-induced global warming over the past four decades has led to less snow in much of the Northern Hemisphere.
These changes mean that artificial snow, which has been used by resorts for decades, is increasingly becoming a lifeline. "Current best estimates are that 95% of ski areas rely on snowmaking to some extent to remain viable," Orr told CNN.
But as temperatures rise, questions arise about how viable snowmaking will be in the future. If it is not cold enough, the machines simply do not work.
That is why Snow Laboratory's new technology is so attractive.
The science makes sense, says Jordy Hendrikx, a leading snow scientist and chief scientific advisor for Antarctica New Zealand. "The question is whether that can be scaled up," Hendrikx, who is not involved in the Snow Laboratory, told CNN.
That's exactly what the La Molina project aims to do: see if the lab results can be replicated in the real world.
In recent weeks, Verdaguer and colleagues have set up the snow cannons at the resort. The water comes from a reservoir that fills in the spring with melted snow from the mountains and is not used for drinking water.
In addition to testing the snowmaking efficiency, the project will also conduct environmental tests to ensure there are no adverse impacts. Verdaguer is confident that this will not be the case, as feldspar is already widely used in glassmaking, ceramics and paint.
"If this new technology can produce snow using less water and without adding additional chemicals ... that could be a huge win," Orr said.
But Hendrikx warned that even if the technology delivers on its promise, it may not be enough. As temperatures and humidity continue to rise, he said, "the improvement you have to make has to be quite significant to outweigh what the natural environment produces."
More broadly, Hendrickx believes that making snow is a "maladaptive adaptation," an attempt to adapt to climate change that could ultimately have harmful consequences. "You solve a problem locally, but you increase the problem globally through your energy consumption."
Resorts could use green energy for fake snow, but as the world electrifies, Hendrikx said, this clean energy would arguably be better used elsewhere, "instead of making snow for a very small percentage of the population."
And this touches on a bigger issue: declining snow cover is a problem far beyond the ski industry. "Snow represents our water towers," said Hendrikx, which served as a free repository when people needed it most. If it falls as rain, or melts earlier than normal, "we won't have that later in the spring and summer when we really need it."
Hendrikx understands why resorts make snow. Mountain economies depend on it. And Tourists have come to view snow as a resource that can be tailored to their desire to ski or snowboard on powder-white slopes at certain times of the year.
Ultimately, resorts won't stop making snow anytime soon, he said, so "any way we can find more efficient ways to do that, let's get on with it," he said.
Over the next three years, Snow Laboratory will test its technology at La Molina, but eventually at two other ski resorts in the region to investigate how well it works in different conditions.
The hope is that this technology will give breathing room to struggling mountain communities that rely heavily on snow, Vedaguer said.
"We don't want all the ski areas to be closed in five or 10 years and not have had time to really think about the economics of the regions," he said. "This is just to buy us some time."
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