Abstract: Tourism's responses to the challenge of global climate change are nowadays an important issue for tourism researchers. Winter ski tourism, which has been called "the canary in the coalmine" is highly sensitive to climate change. In recent years, the research on the impacts of climate change on ski tourism has increasingly gained concern all over the world, nevertheless, the relevant study is still blank in China. In order to present a useful reference for Chinese investigators, this paper systematically summarizes the relevant research ideas, the technical methods used, and the achievements obtained, through extensive synthesis of previous studies, and pointes out the major shortcomings concerning the current studies, as well as some primary issues that should be paid attention to in the further studies.

Key words: climate change, ski tourism, impacts