Future Winter Olympics under threat from rising temperatures

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.

Niels de Hoog

Only one of the 21 previous Winter Olympics locations would be able to reliably host the Games in the 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, which start on 4 February, show that cities such as Vancouver, Turin and Pyeong chang 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.

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