Greek mountain snow cover halved in past four decades due to regional warming

Alexopoulos, Konstantis; Willis, Ian C.; Pritchard, Hamish D.; Kyros, Giorgos; Kotroni, Vassiliki; Lagouvardos, Konstantinos

doi:10.5194/tc-20-2209-2026

Articles | Volume 20, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-2209-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-2209-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 4

Research article

|

23 Apr 2026

Research article |

| 23 Apr 2026

Greek mountain snow cover halved in past four decades due to regional warming

Konstantis Alexopoulos, Ian C. Willis, Hamish D. Pritchard, Giorgos Kyros, Vassiliki Kotroni, and Konstantinos Lagouvardos

Data sets

Monthly Fractional Snow Cover aggregates over the Greek mountains reconstructed with snowMapper K. Alexopoulos et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19335252

GMBA Mountain Inventory v2 M. A. Snethlage et al. https://doi.org/10.48601/earthenv-t9k2-1407

Global mountain snow cover phenology from MODIS/Terra imagery C. Notarnicola https://doi.org/10.48784/1zvv-nw59

Model code and software

snowMapper v1.0.0 K. Alexopoulos et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17663731

Short summary

Our research shows that Greece's highest mountains have lost half of their winter snow over the past four decades. Using a new model that reconstructs daily snow cover from satellite and climate data, we found a rapid and widespread decline driven mainly by rising temperatures. These changes fall outside the natural variability of the climate and highlight growing risks for water resources in Mediterranean mountain regions, due to snow droughts.