Face to Face With the Thwaites Glacier. Less than a day after arriving at the ice, we are already up close and personal with the fastest-melting glacier in Antarctica.

The sun came out to greet the icebreaker Araon’s arrival at the site of scientific interest at the Thwaites Glacier on Thursday.CreditCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

 

 By Raymond Zhong

Reporting from the icebreaker Araon in the Amundsen Sea

  

Yesterday, we arrived at the Thwaites Glacier. This morning, we are surrounded by it.

The end of the glacier that sits on the ocean is formed of two long tongues of ice, with a narrow channel of water between them.

We sailed down this channel overnight and, by breakfast, made it to the end. Now we are enveloped on three sides in Thwaites’s icy embrace.

Sources: MarineTraffic; U.S. National Ice Center. By Mira Rojanasakul and William B. Davis/The New York Times
 

 The Araon’s captain, Kim Gwang-heon, was nervous about sailing here. Satellite imagery showed the passage strewed with sea ice. Once the ship started down the channel, the winds could have blown the ice in our direction, blocking our way back out. But Won Sang Lee, the expedition’s chief scientist, was determined to try.

 The end of the channel is as close as the ship can get to the spot on Thwaites where the scientists hope to drill through the ice later this month. Anchoring nearby would let the researchers fly their gear to the site with the fewest trips by helicopter between the ship and the glacier. That will help their complex, monthlong operation start as soon as possible. And so, thanks to Captain Kim’s expert sailing, we find ourselves close enough to the glacier’s immense face to have a staring contest.

 

The sun is warm. The sea is calm. Even the penguins are having a good morning. Small groups of them leaped and romped in the waters around the ship.

As far as Dr. Lee can tell, we might be the first humans to reach these waters. The seabed is unmapped by modern sonar, suggesting no other ship has sailed here. “The past four years it’s been almost covered by sea ice,” Dr. Lee said.

The lack of ice is a great help to research trips like this one, but it is also a sign of how quickly the Antarctic climate is shifting. The annual maximum sea ice cover around the continent has plumbed new lows in recent years.

 “It’s really changing rapidly, this region,” Dr. Lee said. “It’s really good for science, but not good for human beings.”

Surrounded by Thwaites ice. Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

 

 Raymond Zhong reports on climate and environmental issues for The Times.

O Mundo degelando, e os países preocupados com Terras raras. A 🌏 já é rara...

O Boeing 757 de Trump com seu filho, Donald Jr, chega à capital da Groenlândia, Nuuk, no começo de 2025 - Emil Stach/Ritzau Scanpix - 7.jan.2025/AFP

by  Igor Gielow

 

 

Entenda por que Trump quer a Groenlândia; veja infográfico

 

• Riquezas minerais, rotas comerciais e posição militar estratégica orientam investida de americano contra ilha da Dinamarca
• Aquisição já foi tentada por Washington, que tem uma base importante na ilha, e ação militar acabaria com a Otan

  

Obsessão antiga de Donald Trump retomada após a captura do ditador Nicolás Maduro em Caracas, a Groenlândia tem uma trinca de fatores principais a orientar a investida do presidente americano sobre o local, um território autônomo da Dinamarca.

O primeiro motivo são as riquezas minerais que teoricamente poderão ser acessadas com a aceleração do aquecimento global negado por Trump, que afeta cada vez mais a camada que no inverno chega a 3 km de gelo e cobre todo o interior da maior ilha não continental do planeta.

 

No papel, isso significa a possibilidade de extração de petróleo e gás, mas principalmente de minerais do subsolo groenlandês. Entre os elementos presentes se destacam as famosas terras raras, motivo de cobiça global e outra fixação de Trump —afinal, a sua rival China controla a maior parte das reservas globais.

Esses elementos são vitais para a indústria de alta tecnologia, com amplas aplicações militares. E em dois campos da Groenlândia há 66% das reservas não chinesas das chamadas terras raras pesadas, as mais importantes para essas aplicações.

Além disso, há os já citados hidrocarbonetos, lítio fundamental para baterias, grafite, níquel, cobre e minerais críticos. Tal exploração não é, contudo, garantida: cientistas alertam que o derretimento tornará o solo instável e propenso a desmoronamentos.

Já o gelo do mar, que retrocedeu em torno da ilha em 30% nos últimos 40 anos, leva à segunda razão econômica e geopolítica: o controle potencial de rotas marítimas em caso de conflito.

 

Passam perto da Groenlândia caminhos que o aquecimento abre mais a cada ano: em 2036, o oceano Ártico só deverá ser intransponível no inverno junto à costa nordeste da ilha, com o resto sendo aberto por quebra-gelos: só a Rússia tem uma frota de seis gigantes com propulsão nuclear.

Moscou há anos tem a iniciativa de usar as rotas, estabelecendo o contato entre São Petersburgo e a costa oeste da China. O Canadá, por sua vez, sempre lutou para operar uma rota semelhante de seu lado do polo Norte.

Já a Ponte Ártica, que ligaria rapidamente Rússia e EUA, por ora está morta por motivos políticos, enquanto a Rota Transpolar, por convenientes águas internacionais, ainda não é navegável de forma constante.

Por fim, mas não menos importante, há a questão estratégica. Desde o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial, quando tentou comprar pela primeira vez a Groenlândia que ocupou de 1941 a 1945 para evitar que os nazistas que tomaram a Dinamarca chegassem perto dos EUA, Washington dá atenção especial ao local.

 

A mítica Base Aérea de Thule, hoje Base Espacial de Pituffik, no noroeste da ilha, sedia radares e controla satélites vitais para a proteção da América do Norte contra ataques nucleares. O Ártico, afinal, é o caminho mais curto entre silos terrestres russos e chineses e seus alvos nos EUA.

Hoje a instalação tem 150 militares e civis, alguns groenlandeses. No ano passado, sua comandante foi demitida após criticar a política americana para a região logo depois de uma visita do vice de Trump, J. D. Vance, ao local.

Por óbvio, Trump só fala nessa última questão para enfatizar a importância de controlar a ilha. Diz que ela está exposta a ataques de adversários, ignorando não só os 85% de locais que rejeitam mudar de governante. Ele também esquece da presença americana e do fato de que a Dinamarca, cujo reino é integrado pelo território de 57 mil pessoas, é parte da Otan.

A aliança militar do Ocidente foi criada pelos EUA em 1949 para conter a expansão soviética na Europa. Trump nunca escondeu seu desprezo pela entidade, que na gestão atual reagiu ao mesmo tempo elevando seus gastos militares e adulando o americano.

 

Derretimento do gelo na Groenlândia pode elevar em 25 cm o nível dos oceanos

                       

Hoje com 32 membros, alguns rivais entre si, a Otan nunca viu um de seus integrantes atacar diretamente o outro. Isso daria um curto-circuito no seu papel fulcral, o de defesa mútua em caso de agressão.

A Dinamarca, de todo modo, com seus 15,4 mil soldados, nada poderia fazer contra os 1,3 milhão de militares dos EUA, noves fora seus armamentos.

Na ilha, Copenhague até tenta mostrar serviço. Após as primeiras declarações de Trump no ano passado sobre sua vontade de ter o território, reforçou sua presença com 7 dos 12 barcos-patrulha que tem com uma fragata, além de anunciar o posicionamento de caças F-16 e helicópteros no local.

Na prática, claro, isso é insuficiente. Mas na hipótese de um ataque russo, os EUA e aliados europeus estariam ali do lado para intervir. Por isso a primeira-ministra dinamarquesa, Mette Frederiksen, não exagera ao dizer que uma ação contra a Groenlândia iria acabar com a Otan.

Why the weirdest sea level changes on Earth are happening off the coast of Japan

Fishing boats sail toward a kelp harvest area in the Northern Territories, 3.7 kilometers off Nemuro, Hokkaido, Japan on June 2, 2018. Fish and kombu seaweed harvested in this region are crucial to Japan's food culture, but recent changes in a warm ocean current called the Kuroshio have damaged these fisheries.

The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images

 

 By Chris Mooney, Yumi Asada

 

 

Bathtubs and pools mislead us about the ocean: Its surface is anything but flat.

Seas pile up in some spots, pushed by trade winds or pulled by gravity toward big things like ice sheets. Amid it all, at the western end of large ocean basins, the fastest surface currents — veins of warm water — race toward the poles, causing additional slopes at the surface.

The ocean is uneven to begin with, and its unevenness is also changing. Maps of recent changes show intricate patterns of watery hills and valleys, but also call attention to one extraordinary location. Off the coast of Japan, one region of the ocean has been rising by nearly an inch every year, right next to another where it has been falling even faster.

It’s the fingerprint of one of those surface currents changing its location, an event that has had dramatic repercussions. The Kuroshio, or “Black Current,” is one of the largest streams of water anywhere in the world, and its recent movement has triggered record-warm ocean temperatures and upended fisheries, an indelible staple of Japanese culture. Scientists say the warm waters have even amplified heatwaves on land and driven extreme rainfall. 

 

And while there are signs some of the changes are now waning, fishing communities say they aren’t yet back to normal. Meanwhile, scientists worry it could be a sign of more volatility to come.

The position of the current could keep fluctuating, said Bo Qiu, a leading Kuroshio expert at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. “It’s hard to predict the future, but given the data we have so far, I can only see the intensity becoming larger and larger,” he said. 

The Boso Peninsula forms the eastern edge of Tokyo Bay. Normally, the Kuroshio Extension banks away from Japan and heads into the Pacific near this spot. But in recent years, it's continued northward, bringing unprecedented warm water with it.

John S Lander/LightRocket/Getty Images

 

 

A river in the ocean

The deep, warm Kuroshio transports more than 200 times as much water as the Amazon River, traveling north from the equator and normally banking east around Japan’s Boso peninsula, near Tokyo. Here, it becomes known as the Kuroshio Extension as it heads into the open Pacific. 

 

But in recent years, the current has been behaving in anything but the usual way, and the Extension, in particular, made a major divergence along Japan’s coast. Its northern edge shifted as much as 300 miles farther poleward, leading to unprecedented warm waters in the surrounding region.

“I was so surprised I don’t even know if ‘surprised’ is the right word,” said Shusaku Sugimoto, an associate professor at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, a northern coastal city. 

 

When a major ocean current changed course, sea levels changed with it

Recent changes in a warm current called the Kuroshio have created some of the fastest rising seas on the planet — right next to seas that are falling even faster. 

Sugimoto led a study analyzing ocean temperatures off the coast in locations the Extension didn’t historically reach, but has in recent years. “The fact that the temperature rose 6 degrees (Celsius) off the Sanriku coast, and the elevated temperature persisted for two years, represents a level of water temperature rise we’ve never seen before,” he said. 

It’s not the only change.

In August of 2017, the Kuroshio current south of Japan settled into a “large meander” pattern, leaving the coastline and looping southward, taking its warm waters with it. This big shift in water temperatures south of Japan changes the distributions of fish species offshore.

Large meanders themselves are a well-known recurring feature of the current, explained Shinichiro Kida, an oceanographer at Kyushu University. Records of these events date back to the 1960s. During a lengthy meander event from 1975 to 1980, scientists saw a severe decline in anchovy in the Enshunada Sea, a major fishing region to the south of Japan’s main island of Honshu. The anchovy were replaced by sardines, which favor the warmer water the current brought to the region.

But no Kuroshio large meander that we know of has lasted as long as this one. In August, the Japan Meteorological Agency finally declared that it had ended after nearly eight years. But overall both changes have had a big effect on this country that is home to more than 100 million. 

 

The meander and the Extension shift are connected, Qiu said. He co-authored a new paper in the Journal of Climate arguing as much, and calling the configuration a “new dynamic regime.”

“I’ve been working on the Kuroshio Extension for more than three decades,” Qiu said. “I never expected this.”

As the Kuroshio powers along, it not only brings warmer water but also, depending on its location, higher sea level. There can be a several-foot difference between ocean heights on different sides of the current, thanks to its warmth and speed .

But because of these factors, any new movement of the current can have dramatic effects. 

 

The large meander, for example, triggered a sea level fall in one region and pronounced sea level rise — by as much as half a foot — along the coast of the island of Honshu south of Tokyo. In October of 2017, when Typhoon Lan struck the Shizuoka Prefecture along this coastline, the higher sea level amplified the damage, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

It is not only the height of the sea: As the Kuroshio is a warm current, and one traveling northward into cooler waters, its arrival in a new location has enormous effects on ocean temperatures.

The big question is how much the recent phenomena are part of a natural cycle, and how much it’s influenced by something else, like climate change. (And how much it’s both, combined.)

The impact of climate change on the large meander is unclear, because of its long history. But as far as the Extension shift goes, there are mounting reasons to implicate greenhouse gases and a changing climate.

When the tropics travel to you

To understand the recent changes in the Kuroshio is to understand how water moves through the world’s oceans, especially the large rotating “gyres” found in the world’s major ocean basins. 

 Five of these basins — North and South Pacific, North and South Atlantic, and Indian — feature a similar pattern. Warm water travels west along the equator, then turns toward the poles. The currents carrying the warm water north or south on poleward transits are called “western boundary currents,” and they include the Kuroshio and its four famed cousins: the Gulf Stream, the Brazil, the East Australian, and the Agulhas.

 

Japan has seen some of the world's most extreme ocean changes

In recent years, waters off Japan’s Pacific Coast have experienced some of the world’s highest rates of ocean warming, as well as extreme changes in sea level.

 

Scientists are now seeing most of these currents changing in a similar way — getting warmer and pushing even farther poleward.

This change is rooted in a phenomenon known as the Hadley Cell, a global zone of warm, rising air across the tropics. It’s now expanding due to climate change. 

 

“This expansion shifts not just rainfall patterns but also the zones of sinking air that anchor high-pressure systems, such as the Pacific High,” explains Brown University climate scientist Emanuele Di Lorenzo.

In the middle latitudes, these massive high-pressure systems are the driving force behind currents like the Kuroshio. So, when the winds move, the currents do too.

Both models and data suggest the Kuroshio Extension, in particular, has been moving north partly because of the atmospheric shift, Di Lorenzo explained.

Between 1993 and 2021, driven by wind changes, the northern edge of the Kuroshio Extension shifted north by about 130 miles, a recent study found. This was before an even larger shift in 2023 and 2024. 

 

The Kuroshio Extension’s leap in 2023 and 2024 was an extreme event. The northern edge reached nearly to the northern tip of Honshu, Japan’s largest island. In a different study, Sugimoto and colleagues with the Japan Meteorological Agency and the Meteorological Research Institute took oceanographic measurements in the Extension’s new location. They found water as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than usual, extending to a depth of around 400 meters, or 1,300 feet.

The authors note that for an entire year and a half between April 2023 and August 2024, the region saw “intense marine heatwave conditions almost every day.”

And it was not just in the water: the Japan Meteorological Agency also found that the extreme ocean conditions contributed to record summer heat over land in northern Japan in 2023. Another group of scientists, meanwhile, linked the warm offshore current to extreme rainfall over Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo, in September of 2023. 

The first saury catch of the season is landed at a port in Nemuro on Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido on Aug. 15, 2025. This species has been particularly affected by changes in the Kuroshio.

Kyodo News/Getty Images

 

An uncertain future for fisheries

These ocean changes have altered the distributions of fish populations along Japan’s Pacific Coast, creating extreme impacts on Japan’s iconic fisheries. 

 

In central Japan, for instance, a major mackerel fishery was upended, and fishers say that even though the large meander has now ended, that doesn’t mean things can instantly go back to the way they were.

“Immediate recovery is not a reality, and while conditions may gradually improve, at present, there has been no recovery in catches,” said Osamu Nagai, executive director of the Mie Gaiwan (Outer Bay) Fisheries Cooperative Association.

“The catch has fallen to less than half of what it was 10 years ago — we’re now only catching about 20 to 30 percent of the mackerel. This is a major blow,” Nagai said.

Northeastern Japan’s Sanriku coast, known for its rich fisheries, is a different story, but still a bad one. Here, the southward flowing Oyashio current traditionally brings down cool waters and supports rich fisheries. But when the Kuroshio Extension moved northward into this region, it displaced the Oyashio, bringing on a stark change in ocean temperature. 

 

And it is not just fish species, like Pacific salmon and saury, that became harder to catch.

“What matters most is the foundation of Japan’s most important food culture, which is the flavor made out of Kombu seaweed — it can only be harvested in Hokkaido, near Japan,” said Yoshihiro Tachibana, a professor who specializes in climate dynamics at Mie University. 

 

Kombu kelp is laid in the sun to dry Wakkanai, Hokkaido, on July 15, 2012. This seaweed is a vital part of Japan's food culture and economy. But it's becoming harder to harvest.

Hiroaki Murata/The Yomiuri Shimbun/AP

 

 

“Kombu stocks are declining dramatically. Dashi (the fundamental Japanese soup stock) culture might collapse. It’s declining. We can’t get any at all. So I believe this has a tremendous impact on our food culture as well,” he said.

Recently, the northern edge of the Kuroshio extension has retreated a bit. It has moved back to around 37 degrees North Latitude, according to Qiu. That’s still a high location historically, but hardly as extreme as before. 

 

But the questions remain: what do these extreme ocean events mean, how they are linked to climate change? For at least one researcher, they’re an early sign of things to come.

“It’s a great opportunity to learn what the oceans will be like 100 years from now,” said Sugimoto, of Tohoku University in the northeastern region of Honshu, Japan’s largest island.

“An unprecedented ocean phenomenon is now occurring by chance in Tohoku,” he continued. “Understanding how this has altered the seas of Tohoku offers a chance to understand how the world’s oceans will change in the future.”

Elisabeth Doty contributed to this report.

Hidrelétricas da Amazônia podem perder até 40% de força de geração nos próximos anos

 

Trecho de vazão reduzida do rio Xingu sofre com redução de água devido à barragem de Belo Monte, no Pará - Lalo de Almeida 20.set.22/Folhapress 

 

by  André Borges

 

 

 

Brasília

O protagonismo da geração hidrelétrica está em xeque. Grande parte das usinas da Amazônia poderá sofrer reduções drásticas em seu potencial de geração de energia elétrica, com perdas projetadas entre 30% e 40% nas próximas décadas, devido aos impactos das mudanças climáticas.

A conclusão faz parte de um novo estudo da ANA (Agência Nacional de Águas e Saneamento Básico) sobre as projeções climáticas para o regime de chuvas, vazões de rios e a segurança hídrica no Brasil nas próximas décadas. A redução projetada considera um horizonte de quatro décadas, até 2065.

Caso os investimentos em novos projetos continuem baseados apenas em dados históricos, especialistas alertam que o país pode ver uma onda de usinas incapazes de produzir a energia esperada, resultando em aumento de custo para o consumidor e dependência de termelétricas fósseis.

 

Segundo o relatório "Impacto da Mudança Climática nos Recursos Hídricos do Brasil", a queda na produção seria uma consequência de mudanças que podem ocorrer no padrão de fluxo natural das águas por causa do aquecimento global.

Ao observar o comportamento já verificado das vazões médias dos rios no período de 1950 a 2014, o documento projeta o desempenho no futuro próximo, até 2065, e para tempos mais distantes, num horizonte até 2100. O resultado aponta que a região Norte é a com maior risco de ser afetada.

Enquanto Sul, Sudeste e Centro-Oeste tendem a registrar diminuições de até 10% na geração hidrelétrica, a Amazônia pode enfrentar perdas maiores devido à redução de vazões, afetando usinas de grande porte já instaladas e os empreendimentos planejados para os próximos anos.

"Considerando que a geração de energia seja diretamente relacionada à vazão média afluente, as regiões Sul, Sudeste e Centro-Oeste mostram reduções de 0(zero)-10%, enquanto a região Norte apresenta as projeções mais pessimistas, com alterações de 30-40%", afirma o estudo.

 

"Dentre os empreendimentos existentes, os maiores impactos se concentram nas usinas com maior potência instalada, a maioria delas localizada na bacia Amazônica", continua o documento.

O estudo da Agência Nacional de Águas aponta que, se nada for ajustado, a expansão hidrelétrica brasileira corre o risco de ser planejada com base em um cenário climático que não existirá mais.

Nas últimas duas décadas, o país apostou na Amazônia como a última grande fronteira hídrica para ampliar sua capacidade hidrelétrica, com a construção de usinas como Belo Monte, no rio Xingu, e Santo Antônio e Jirau, no rio Madeira.

Ocorre que, segundo o documento, essas usinas foram projetadas levando em conta séries históricas de vazões que já não representam mais o padrão futuro dos rios. Com o prolongamento das estações secas e a antecipação da perda de umidade no solo, fenômenos já observados anualmente no Xingu e no sul do Amazonas, o ciclo de água na região está vivendo uma fase de mudança estrutural.

 

No rio Amazonas, houve um aumento na ocorrência de cheias e secas extremas nas últimas décadas. Se considerado o período dos últimos 125 anos, nota-se que, entre as dez maiores cheias ocorridas na região, sete se deram nos últimos 16 anos, a partir de 2009.

No caso das secas, entre os 10 menores níveis observados, 5 ocorreram nos últimos 28 anos. Em 2023 e 2024 a região registrou duas secas seguidas sem precedentes, com níveis de água muito abaixo do que já havia sido observado no passado.

A ANA sustenta que incorporar cenários climáticos futuros ao planejamento de longo prazo não é apenas uma recomendação técnica, mas uma necessidade para evitar perdas financeiras e insegurança energética.

O Brasil possui hoje 216 gigawatts de potência de energia elétrica, com mais de 24 mil usinas em operação comercial, segundo a Aneel (Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica). Metade dessa geração vem da força dos rios, com 50,5% atrelada a usinas hidrelétricas de todos os portes.

O estudo reforça que os efeitos não se limitam à geração elétrica. A redução de vazões também vai afetar a irrigação, o abastecimento urbano e a biodiversidade, caso o planejamento dessas áreas não passe a incorporar as projeções climáticas.

 

Os resultados indicam que as mudanças climáticas na hidrologia deverão mexer com a segurança hídrica em boa parte do Brasil, enquanto outras regiões devem sofrer com o aumento de enxurradas e alagamentos urbanos, como se viu no Rio Grande do Sul em 2024.

Do lado do poder público, a falta de recursos financeiros tem comprometido o enfrentamento do problema, afirma a ANA. "A sustentabilidade política das políticas hídricas e climáticas segue ameaçada por cortes orçamentários, descontinuidade institucional e ausência de uma política de Estado que una água e clima de forma duradoura", diz a agência no documento.

A ANA afirma que uma eventual mudança de postura "exige blindagem orçamentária, maior participação social e inovação normativa, de modo a reconhecer a incerteza como ponto de partida para garantir segurança hídrica em cenários climáticos cada vez mais instáveis".

‘Ghost resorts’: as hundreds of ski slopes lie abandoned, will nature reclaim the Alps? With the snow line edging higher, 186 French ski resorts have shut, while global heating threatens dozens more.

 

The skeletal remains of a once-busy ski lift in Céüze 2000, in France’s Hautes-Alpes department. The resort, which had welcomed skiers for 85 years, never reopened after March 2018 as smaller snowfalls in successive seasons made it unviable. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The Guardian

 by Phoebe Weston in Céüze

When Céüze 2000 ski resort closed at the end of the season in 2018, the workers assumed they would be back the following winter. Maps of the pistes were left stacked beside a stapler; the staff rota pinned to the wall.

Six years on, a yellowing newspaper dated 8 March 2018 sits folded on its side, as if someone has just flicked through it during a quiet spell. A half-drunk bottle of water remains on the table.

The Céüze 2000 resort when snow was plentiful.

 

 

The Céüze resort in the southern French Alps had been open for 85 years and was one of the oldest in the country. Today, it is one of scores of ski resorts abandoned across France – part of a new landscape of “ghost stations”.

More than 186 have been permanently closed already, raising questions about how we leave mountains – among the last wild spaces in Europe – once the lifts stop running.

 

As global heating pushes the snow line higher across the Alps, thousands of structures are being left to rot – some of them breaking down and contaminating the surrounding earth, driving debate about what should happen to the remnants of old ways of life – and whether to let nature reclaim the mountains.

Snowfall at Céüze started becoming unreliable in the 1990s. To be financially viable, the resort needed to be open for at least three months. In that last winter, it only managed a month and a half. For the two years before that it had not been able to operate at all.

Opening the resort each season cost the local authority as much as €450,000 (£390,000). As the season got shorter, the numbers no longer added up. To avoid a spiral of debt, the decision was made to close.

The resort closed permanently during the 2020 winter due to a lack of snow. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The Guardian

“It was costing us more to keep it open than to keep it closed for the season,” says Michel Ricou-Charles, president of the local Buëch‑Dévoluy community council, which oversees the site. Even under the most optimistic projections, the future looked bleak. “We looked into using artificial snow, but realised that would delay the inevitable,” he says.

It was seven years before the trucks and helicopters came in to begin removing the pylons. Still, the local community grieved for the small, family-oriented resort, which was host to generations of memories. As demolitions began, they came to take nuts, bolts and washers as mementoes of what they had lost.

Degrading wild terrain

In France, there are today 113 ski lifts totalling nearly 40 miles (63km) in length that have been abandoned, nearly three-quarters of them in protected areas. It is not just ski infrastructure. The Mountain Wilderness association estimates that there are more than 3,000 abandoned structures dotted around French mountains, slowly degrading Europe’s richest wild terrain. This includes military, industrial and forestry waste, such as old cables, bits of barbed wire, fencing and old machinery.

There are 113 abandoned ski lifts in France, nearly three-quarters of which are in protected areas. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The Guardian

Céüze ski resort is fast becoming one of these pollutants. The little wooden cabin at the bottom of the first button lift is shedding insulation. Ropes once used to mark out the piste hang in tatters and bits of plastic are falling off a pylon. The old sheds at each end of the ski lifts often still contain transformers, asbestos, motor oils and greases. Over time, these substances seep into the soil and water.

Corrosion and rust from metal structures left over from the second world war, such as anti-tank rails and metal spikes, have led to changes in plant species in the surrounding area, potentially offering a vision of what could happen if pylons are left to rust over the coming decades.

 

“In Latin, we say memento mori – remember that you are mortal. Don’t think that you are making eternal things; they will end up becoming obsolete,” says Nicolas Masson, from Mountain Wilderness, which is campaigning for old ski infrastructure to be dismantled to make space for nature. “When you make them, ask yourself the question: what will remain?”

Some believe the resorts should remain memorialised landscapes, honouring generations of people who lived and skied here; others believe they should be returned to wild landscapes with their disintegrating machinery removed.

Ecologist Nicolas Masson is part of a campaign to dismantle old ski infrastructure. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The Guardian

 

  

Nature’s recovery

Céüze’s deconstruction started on 4 November 2025, a month before the ski season would once have kicked off. The resort’s ski lifts were airlifted out using a helicopter to minimise environmental disturbance and compression of the earth.

French law requires ski lifts to be removed and dismantled if they are no longer in use. The law only applies to ski lifts built after 2017, however. Most last for 30 years, so no lifts would be considered obsolete until at least 2047. The process is also expensive: dismantling Céüze will cost €123,000. This means most abandoned ski infrastructure is left to disintegrate in situ. What is happening in Céüze is rare.

With pylons cleared and the resort already closed for seven years, early signs of ecological recovery are already visible. A red haze floats over the white snow: winter berries of the dog rose are sprouting where the piste is no longer mown.

Berries can be see on dog rose shrubs which are starting to flourish now the piste is no longer cleared for skiers. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The Guardian

 

The berries are important winter food for birds such as the rare red-billed chough, and their thorny stems are used for nest-building come spring. In the summer, orchids and yellow gentians bloom over these hillsides. The hills surrounding the site are classed as Natura 2000, meaning they are home to Europe’s rarest and most protected wildlife.

The trees are coming back too. “I don’t know if it would take 10, 20 or 50 years, but this is becoming a forest,” says Masson.

 

Wild boar and roe deer living in these forests will benefit from quieter winters. Birds such as grouse shelter from severe cold in winter by digging into the snow, and prefer deep powdery snow – just like skiers. The species is endangered in all the mountain ranges of France.

The dismantling of Céüze comes at a time when many spaces for nature are shrinking. Pierre-Alexandre Métral, a geographer at the University of Grenoble Alpes, who studies abandoned ski resorts, says: “There is a lot of debate about the nature of this dismantling – is it just removing mechanical stuff, or are we attempting to put mountains back into a kind of original state?”

Ecological recovery can be filled with surprises, he says, noting that the maintenance of pistes can be beneficial to some alpine flowers. “If we let nature come back spontaneously – in a wild, uncontrolled way – there are also risks that some invasive species that tend to be stronger could colonise faster,” says Métral.

The hills around the former resort are home to some of Europe’s rarest and most protected wildlife. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The Guardian

There is scant research in this area, but studies from the Valcotos ski resort closure in Madrid’s Sierra de Guadarrama in 1999 show it led to significant recovery of native vegetation and cleaner waterways, while reducing soil erosion.

“These are laboratories of what the mountain could be like in the future with new closures,” says Métral.

On the brink

The question of what to do with these places will play out across Europe’s mountains, and around the world. Skiing is disappearing from many alpine landscapes. “Many lower ones are already closed,” says Masson. “A fraction of a degree changes everything in the mountain environment. It’s the difference between having snow and no snow.”

 

Research suggests that with 2C (3.6F) of global heating, more than half of existing resorts risk having too little snow. Higher altitude resorts are vulnerable to the loss of permafrost, threatening pylons that have been drilled into it. Some resorts, such as St-Honoré 1500, were abandoned before construction was even completed. Even bigger resorts, which typically have funds to invest in new pistes and artificial snow, are struggling to survive.

For some, the loss of Céüze feels premature. Richard Klein,who lives in Roche des Arnauds, near Céüze, feels the ski resort could – and should – have been saved. “It’s a wonderful place to learn to ski – it’s the best. I think it’s really stupid they closed it,” he says. “There were always loads of people.” Klein believes the local authority should have begun using artificial snow, adding: “Now it’s too late.”

 

Yet life has not disappeared from Céüze. In October 2025, the resort’s Hotel Galliard is being sold to a developer looking to open it for events, according to Ricou-Charles. A property developer has bought the children’s holiday residence, and a carpenter has moved into the building where the old ticket office was. The rooms used as a holiday camp for children have cracks appearing down the side, but might open again in the future.

“Céüze will continue to live, despite the loss of the resort,” says Ricou-Charles. “We are not mourning Céüze because it is not dead.”

On winter weekends dozens of cars still gather in the car park, with people enjoying quieter activities on the hillside, such as walking, snow-shoeing, cross-country skiing and sledging.

A poster from the resort’s 80th anniversary celebrations. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The Guardian

Masson does not like the term “ghost resort” because it suggests total abandonment when what is happening in his area is more complicated. “People continue to come,” he says. “We don’t need large machines to make mountains attractive.”

What happens at Céüze is a glimpse into a future that faces dozens of other small resorts, and mountain landscapes, across Europe. “What is our heritage that we will want to keep,” asks Masson. “And what is just a ruin we want to dismantle? That is a question we have to ask every time, and it requires some reflection.”