TOKYO: A central Japan city at the foot of Mt. Fuji has lost over a month’s worth of winter days per year in the past decade due to global warming, Kyodo news agency reported a recent study by a US-based climate research organisation showed.
The city of Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture added 35 winter days above 0 C annually on average between 2014 and 2023, the most among 901 northern hemisphere cities analysed, according to a December report by Climate Central.
The findings come as Mt. Fuji received its first snowcap of the season on Nov 7 this year, the latest date since records began in 1894.
According to Kyodo, over half of 57 Japanese cities analysed saw climate change add at least two weeks’ worth of winter days above freezing each year, including Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture and Kyoto, which saw an additional 23 days and 21 days, respectively.
As warmer winters could lead to water shortages due to reduced mountain snowpack, as well as increase the population of disease-carrying pests like mosquitoes and ticks, the organisation has stressed the importance of ending reliance on fossil fuels such as oil and coal as soon as possible.
“This warming trend, which is driven by human-caused climate change, not only disrupts the season itself but also erodes the benefits it provides year round,“ the group noted.
The report, which compared observed December-February temperatures in the past 10 years with projected temperatures without human-induced climate change, found that around 44 percent of the 901 cities analysed lost an average of a week or more of winter days annually due to global warming.
More than one-third of the 123 countries and regions covered lost a week or more, with 19 countries, mostly in Europe, experiencing over two added weeks of winter days above freezing.
Europe, the fastest-warming continent, has been doing so twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the group.
