Impact of climate change on ski tourism and its adaptation research: Progress and prospects

Ski tourism is an important form of service provided by the cryosphere to the socioeconomic system, but its sustainable development faces substantial challenges from climate change. This review mainly synthesizes studies on climate change and ski tourism since 2000 and adopts a ‘change–impact–adaptation’ analytical logic. From a coupled supply–demand perspective, it reveals the impacts of climate change on ski tourism and identifies multi-stakeholder adaptation pathways. This review shows that mountain regions are warming faster than the global mean, and snow-cover extent and duration are generally declining. These changes reduce snow reliability, shorten ski seasons, and weaken snowmaking potential, thereby reducing skiing demand, increasing energy consumption and ecological risks associated with snowmaking, and constraining the operational resilience and sustainable development capacity of ski resorts. Globally, multi-stakeholder climate adaptation patterns involving governments, ski resort operators, skiers, and ski associations have emerged. Adaptation measures include international collaboration, snowmaking and snow storage, fine-scale snow management, snow-condition forecasting, and skiers’ spatiotemporal substitution behaviors. However, evaluations of adaptation effectiveness remain insufficient, and mechanisms for stakeholder coordination are underdeveloped. On this basis, this review proposes a multi-stakeholder collaborative adaptation pathway to promote the transition from short-term emergency responses to systemic resilience and low-carbon development, thereby providing a scientific basis for implementing climate change adaptation strategies and the high-quality development of the ice-and-snow economy.