GENEVA — Much of the Alps just don’t look right for this time of year. Sparse snowfall and unseasonably warm weather in much of Europe is allowing grass to blanket mountaintops across the region where snow might normally be, causing headaches for ski area operators and aficionados of Alpine white.

Patches of grass, rock and dirt were visible Monday in some of Europe’s skiing meccas: Innsbruck in Austria, Villars-sur-Ollon and Crans-Montana in Switzerland and Lenggries in Germany.

The dearth of snow has added to concerns about temperature upheaval linked to climate change.

In a swath stretching from France to Poland, with the Alps at the center, much of Europe is enjoying short-sleeve weather. A weather map showed Poland racking up highs in recent days of more than 50 degrees .

It’s a sharp contrast to the frigid weather and blizzards in parts of the United States — and to ski slopes in California, where Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Mountain reported as much as 42 inches of new snow in a weekend storm.

Swiss state forecaster MeteoSwiss pointed to some of the hottest temperatures ever for this time of year. A weather station in Delemont, in the Jura range on the French border, hit a record average of nearly 65 degrees on Jan. 1, more than 30 degrees higher than the previous record for January.

“This turn of the new year could almost make you forget that it’s the height of winter,” MeteoSwiss wrote on its blog.

Last year was the hottest on record in Switzerland and France. More broadly, the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization says the last eight years are on track to be the warmest on record. Its final tally on global temperatures for 2022 will be released in mid-January.

Météo France, the national weather agency, said the country experienced some of the warmest year-end weather ever. That capped a 2022 that saw rampant forest fires and drought conditions.

Météo France said the southern Alps — as well as the northern Alps above 7,200 feet — have had close to normal snowfall, but snow is lacking at lower altitudes in the northern Alps and across the Pyrenees.

Germany too has seen unusually springlike temperatures, with a high of 61 degrees in some areas Monday. New Year’s Eve is believed to have been the warmest for the date since reliable records began. The German Weather Service reported readings of 68 degrees in southern Germany, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.

Wim Thiery, a professor of climate science at the University of Brussels, said the same jet stream that pulled down cold air from the Arctic into the U.S. has fanned warm air from subtropical zones into Europe. He warned that the climate continues to change.

“By the end of the century [it’s] just going to be over ... skiing in the Alps as we know it,” he said.