In a warming world, Winter Olympics organizers will have to adapt

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

With an icy white sheet still blanketing much of the Eastern United States after an intense storm this week, it’s hard to imagine a future with less snow at this time of year. 

But over time, climate change has decreased snowpack by as much as 20 percent per decade in parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

This trend is already causing trouble for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, global events reliant on snow to succeed. In a landmark 2024 study, researchers found that potential host locations are dwindling as temperatures warm. 

Just weeks before this year’s Olympics-Paralympics events kick off in Italy, scientists published a follow-up study analyzing how the games can adapt. The most effective option: shifting when they are held. 

Disappearing snow isn’t just affecting Olympians. Around the world, the warming climate is shortening recreational ski and snowboarding seasons, which could have cascading impacts for the towns that have long relied on this winter economy. 

For more than a century, the Winter Olympics have been held almost every four years in snowy cities across the globe, from the first games in Chamonix, France, to the most recent in Beijing. The Paralympic Games take place in the same location shortly afterward. 

Olympic competitions such as alpine skiing and snowboarding are dependent on consistent snowpack. Rapid levels of warming across the Northern Hemisphere disrupt that. In 2010, Vancouver saw a record-warm January, partially due to the weather phenomenon known as El Niño, and had to drive and fly in enough snow to fill 20 Big Bens for snowboarding and freestyle skiing events, the Christian Science Monitor reports. 

Warm weather also threatens the quality of the snow already on the ground, as shown at Russia’s Sochi Olympics and Paralympics in 2014, which saw an uptick in injury rates compared with the previous games as athletes struggled in the slush. 

With this in mind, the International Olympic Committee, which governs the games, recently commissioned a study to determine future climate impacts. Researchers analyzed 93 regions around the world that have previously hosted the Olympic Winter and Paralympic Games to determine whether they’d be “climate-reliable” by the 2050s. Under the most likely emissions scenario, only 52 locations met the criteria for the Olympics and just 22 for the Paralympics, given that it is slightly later in the season, according to their 2024 study.

But there are ways to adapt, according to co-author Daniel Scott, a climate expert at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. In a follow-up study published last week, Scott and his colleagues found that shifting both the Olympic and Paralympic Games to earlier dates could increase the number of climate-suitable host countries, particularly for the Paralympics. 

As I reported last year, experts have called for a similar timing change for the Summer Olympics to reduce the risk of extreme heat, which has harmed both competitors’ and fans’ health in recent years. 

It’s a seemingly simple shift but comes with its own set of complexities. Moving the Winter Olympics up a few weeks would mean the games are happening right after the holiday season. Cities may struggle to secure pre-games housing, ensure there’s sufficient infrastructure, or find volunteers shortly after Christmas. 

Another added nuisance, according to Scott: Television rights. Broadcasters and advertisers pay billions and plan years ahead for the rights to air the Olympics, which provides the financial foundation for the games. Changing the time of the games could disrupt this model, at least in the short term. 

Other experts have pointed out that organizers must reckon with the Olympic Games’ own rampant emissions to secure a future less threatened by climate change. Cities often raze ecosystems to build new facilities, companies use copious amounts of energy to broadcast the competitions, and people travel from around the world in carbon-emitting planes to spectate. 

For the Winter Games specifically, environmentalists are concerned about the growing amount of artificial snow cities must pump out to supplement dwindling natural supplies. In 2022, Beijing made Olympics history as the first host to use artificial snow almost exclusively to support the games. 

It was a mammoth task. China pulled water from key reservoirs to help create a wintry snowscape in a historically dry city. But critics said the effort strained water supplies for local communities, disrupted soil and plant growth, and used large amounts of energy. 

The 2026 Olympics is in a snowier region, the Italian Alps. But still, the International Olympic Committee told the Associated Press it has produced more than 2 million cubic yards of artificial snow for the upcoming games. 

Since the last time Italy’s Cortina d’Ampezzo hosted in 1956, February temperatures have warmed in the area by 6.4 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a recent analysis by the nonprofit Climate Central. 

Environmentalists have pointed to the climate feedback loop this can create: As places pump out more artificial snow, the emissions from this process—if fossil fuels are used—feed the climate change that will reduce future natural snowpack. 

Artificial snow is becoming similarly important for recreational winter sports as temperatures rise. Some resorts have taken to stockpiling snow under giant insulating blankets to keep it from melting during warmer seasons, WIRED reports. But these efforts are costly, and it may soon become untenable for certain regions in the Northern Hemisphere, including some parts of the Northeastern US such as New York and Pennsylvania, to save or make enough snow for a lucrative ski operation. 

Scott told me there will be “winners and losers” as winter resort towns face global warming. “As some of those businesses go out of business, the others are there to pick up market share, if demand stays the same,” he said. 

Though Scott recognizes the energy and water required to produce machine-made snow, he believes the sustainability of snowmaking gets a bit of a bad rep. He noted that up to 90 percent of the water is returned to the same watershed once the snow melts, and the process likely has a lower emissions footprint than traveling farther to ski elsewhere or flying to watch the Olympics. 

Nonetheless, winter sport enthusiasts—professional and amateur—will have to adapt to changing conditions. A survey of Olympic winter athletes and coaches from 20 countries found 90 percent had concerns about how climate change will affect the future of their sport.

“When it comes to the Olympics, you hope you deliver [athletes] the best conditions possible,” Scott said. “These people have trained their whole damn lives for these things.”