Sourp, Laura ， Fayad, Abbas ， Gascoin, Simon
2025-09-01 ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS 2025 7(卷), 9(期), (null页)
Trojena is a mountain resort under construction in the Midian Mountains, Saudi Arabia as part of the NEOM project and the host site for the 2029 Asian Winter Games. The development of a ski resort in this desertic region has sparked debate about its sustainability. Here we examine the potential snow supply in Trojena under present and future climate. We use downscaled ERA5 data and a snowpack model accounting for snow management to simulate the artificial snow production. We simulate the snowpack under future climate using the 2050's projected temperature change from the CMIP6 dataset under the SSP2-4.5 scenario. We find that artificial snow production can support a median of 68 skiable days in the highest elevation area of the resort in present conditions and 57 days in the 2050's period with an increase in the interannual variability. In the low elevation area, the median number of skiable days is 52 in present conditions and 0 in the 2050's despite artificial snow production capacity. We conclude that climate change strongly compromises the utility of the planned infrastructure.