Tourists on holiday in Bulgarian winter resorts will be able to enjoy enough snow after mid-December, said Valeri Spiridonov, Deputy Director of the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (NIMH) at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

He said that the first half of December was expected to be warmer, while the second one colder, with precipitations expected mostly in the last fifteen days of the month.

Spiridonov specified that the lack of snow was not a serious problem for the major winter resorts because they employ artificial snow-making but high temperatures were a concern.

NIMH'Ss Deputy Director said that January 2012 was expected to be like last year's January, or even colder, with normal precipitations.

February would be relatively warm and with less precipitation.

Asked whether Bulgaria should be gearing up for a global warming or for colder spells, the meteorologist said that the climate scenario would include departures from the norm.

To illustrate his point, Spiridonov reminded that the majority of temperature records had been registered in the past decade.

He noted that Bulgaria had not seen drier spells since the 90s.

"This fall is exactly like that. What is more, there has been an increase in the number of heavy precipitation events .Warmer winters also result in a shorter duration of the snow cover," Spiridonov explained.

He emphasized that climate scenarios were mostly based on changes in the concentrations of greenhouse gases, but admitted there was a host of other very potent factors that could reverse predictions, such as solar radiation and ocean currents.

NIMH'Ss Deputy Director, noted, however, that the solar radiation and ocean currents could not be forecast, which was why climate models were based on greenhouse gases as a key factor.

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