Rising temperatures threaten future of Winter Olympics, say experts

Rising temperatures caused by the escalating climate crisis mean future Winter Olympics will struggle to find host cities with enough snow and ice, according to a study.

Only one of 21 previous Winter Olympics locations would be able to reliably host the Games in future if global greenhouse gas emissions remain on their current trajectory, the report says.

The findings, which come as the world’s top winter sports athletes prepare to compete on artificial snow at the Beijing Games in February, show that cities such as Vancouver, Turin and Pyeongchang may become unsuitable locations for the Winter Olympics by the end of the century, with global heating leading to increasingly unsafe and unfair competition conditions.

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In the Alps – home to many Winter Olympics, including the first one in 1924 – even if greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced, only Albertville, at 2,100m above sea level, would remain a reliable host for the Games by mid-century, the study by the University of Waterloo found.

Researchers used a survey completed by 339 elite-level athletes and coaches to devise four climatic indicators that predict fair and safe conditions for snow sport competitions: unacceptably high or low temperatures, rain, wet snow, and poor snow coverage.

They found the frequency of unfair and unsafe conditions had increased over the past 50 years in locations where the Winter Olympics were previously held, and that this trend was likely to continue.

“No sport can escape the impacts of a changing climate. Achieving the Paris agreement targets is critical to save snow sports as we know it and ensure there are places across the world to host the Winter Olympics,” said Daniel