UNCERTAIN CONDITIONS

How climate change affects winter sports

- By Sean Gregory

CANCELED COMPETITIONS DUE to warm weather and lack of snow. Skiing in slush. Postponed training sessions for freestyle athletes who need to perfect their risky tricks. Climate change is wreaking havoc on winter sports, so much so that the president of the world skiing and snowboarding governing body has called it an “existential threat” to the sports he oversees.

Human-induced global warming is estimated to have cost the U.S. ski industry more than $5 billion in the first two decades of this century, and, according to a 2024 study commissioned by the International Olympic Committee that appeared in the journal