The snowcapped peak of Mount Fuji is one of the most popular subjects in Japanese art, but it could be becoming a rarer sight. For the first time since records began in 1894, Mount Fuji is facing the start of November without any snow to be seen on its iconic crown.
Snow on Fuji is now past due
The tardiest snowfall on the 3,776-metre volcano, Japan’s highest mountain, had until now been registered as 26 October – a date considered late in the calendar and which has only occurred twice previously with no snow, once in 1955 and once in 2016, according to Yutaka Katsuta, a forecaster at Kofu Local Meteorological Office who spoke to AFP.
Early October is the more normal timeframe for the first snow flakes to appear on the UNESCO-recognised mountain, and last year, 2023, was consistent with that, with snow first seen on Fuji’s summit on 5 October.
Warm summer, warm fall
But 2024 has seen further record summer temperatures around the world and, climatologists say, is on track to be the hottest year on record. In Japan that has played out with a hot summer that has been followed by an unusually warm fall. Japan matched its hottest ever summer temperatures between June and August 2024 and saw the warmer than average weather continue into September.
Caused by factors such as El Niño and a northerly shift in the jet stream that has bathed the island country in warm southerly air, over 1,500 areas experienced what the national Meteorological Society deemed “extremely hot” days over the month, with minimum temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius.
Snowless Fuji three times more likely due to climate change
October has been a similar picture. At least 74 Japanese cities registered temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius and upwards in the first week of October, non-profit research group Climate Central found. That warm spell has now culminated in reaching the end of the month with little chance of the freezing conditions needed to prompt snow on Fuji, breaking a 130-year-old pattern.
“Because of the fact that high temperatures in Japan have been continuing since the summer and as it has been raining, there has been no snowfall,” Shinichi Yanagi, a meteorological officer at the Kofu office, told CNN. But Climate Central has gone further, saying the phenomenon of conditions warm enough to keep Mount Fuji bare are three times more likely as a result of climate change.
