Study by Climate Institute researcher reveals Olympic Winter Games’ climate crisis
University of Waterloo-led study underscores urgent need for adaptation and emission reductions for future Winter Games
Research led by the University of Waterloo has found new critical insights into how climate change threatens the future viability of hosting the Olympic Winter and Paralympic Games (OWG and PWG).
Daniel Scott, Waterloo Climate Institute member and professor in the Faculty of Environment, in collaboration with the University of Innsbruck, looked at 93 cities and regions around the world that have previously hosted OWG and PWG events and revealed a stark decline in climatically reliable sites as global warming continues.
The study, commissioned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to increase understanding of the winter sports environment and how it is being impacted by climate change, projects that under mid-range global emissions scenarios, only 52 locations that previously hosted an Olympic Winter Games will remain climate-reliable by the 2050’s, and just 46 by the 2080’s. The outlook for the Paralympic Winter Games, often scheduled later in the season, is even more dire, with only 22 reliable sites in the 2050’s and 16 in the 2080’s.
“Climate change poses a growing threat to winter sports and the cultural legacy of the Olympic Winter Games,” said Scott.
“We found that warming temperatures and reduced snow reliability will shrink the pool of potential hosts for these global sporting events. The geography of the Winter Games is being altered by climate change and the future of this global celebration of sport will be strongly influenced by climate policy decisions over the next decade. While adaptation strategies like advanced snowmaking can reduce some impacts, they have clear limits.”
Evaluating climate model data sourced from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change such as minimum snow depth and daily freezing temperatures necessary for elite snow sports competitions, the study offers a sobering forecast: under high-emission scenarios, the vast majority of current host locations will no longer be viable by century’s end.
According to the IOC, the findings confirm that the reforms of Olympic Agenda 2020 and 2020+5, with their increased flexibility for hosts, will contribute towards protecting the future of the Olympic Winter Games, including by enabling projects to be hosted across one or more regions, to use a maximum of existing venues. The study reinforces the IOC’s position that the winter sports community must work together to find solutions to mitigate the impact of climate change on winter sport and minimize negative impacts of winter sport on the environment.
The host regions for snow sports at the next three editions of the Olympic Winter Games – the Italian Alps, the French Alps and Wasatch Back, Utah – are all assessed as climate reliable beyond the mid-century and demonstrates that the IOC has elected climate-secure destinations for the Olympic Winter Games for the next decade.
The study, Climate change and the climate reliability of hosts in the second century of the Winter Olympic Games, was recently published in Current Issues in Tourism.