Climate change is a growing threat to tourism, from thawing ski resorts to coral reefs hit by warmer seas, and the industry itself should do more to curb its soaring greenhouse gas emissions, a study showed.

Tourism’s greenhouse gas emissions, on rising trends buoyed by ever more travel, are set to reach about 10 per cent of the world total by 2025 from between 3.9 and six per cent now.

“The tourism industry will be severely impacted by climate change,” according to the study by Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and its Judge Business School and European Climate Foundation.

Coral reefs, for instance, contributed $11.5 billion a year to tourism earnings and are under threat from warmer sea temperatures, rising sea levels and an acidification caused by a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it said.

And warmer winters are shortening winter sports seasons and threatening the viability of some ski resorts, according to the report which distils findings about tourism from studies this year by the UN panel of climate scientists.

Ski resorts can try to adapt by attracting summer hikers, for instance, or buy more snow-making machines. “But it is hard to tell a positive story around ski resorts,” Eliot Whittington, climate change director at CISL, told Reuters.

There is evidence of people travelling to new destinations at risk of vanishing like glaciers, the Arctic, Antarctica or coral atolls

A few areas of the world might benefit from a shift in tourism, such as Alaska or northern Europe. And elsewhere, seasons may shift.

The report said the Costa Brava region of Spain’s Mediterranean coast, for instance, was trying to draw tourists outside the summer months, responding to a lack of water and high temperatures during the high season.

The study also said there was some evidence of people travelling to new destinations at risk of vanishing in a warming world, such as glaciers, the Arctic, Antarctica or coral atolls.

“However, the opportunities presented by such ‘last-chance’ tourism will, by definition, be shortlived,” the report said.