Winter Olympics Sites to be Threatened by Climate Change

If current global warming projections prove to be accurate, only six of the cities that have played host to Winter Olympic games would be cold enough to host again by the end of the century, according to a new study.

In the report "The Future of the Winter Olympics in a Warmer World," researchers from the University of Waterloo and the Management Center Innsbruck in Austria report that even as early as a few decades from now, only 11 of the 19 Winter Olympics sites will be cold enough for winter sports.

"The cultural legacy of the world's celebration of winter sport is increasingly at risk," said lead study author Daniel Scott, a geography and environmental professor at University of Waterloo. "Fewer and fewer traditional winter sports regions will be able to host a Olympic Winter Games in a warmer world."

By the middle of this century Winter Olympic sites including Squaw Valley in the US, Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany, Canada's Vancouver Olympic site and Sochi, Russia, where the 2014 Winter Olympic Games will begin next month, will all be too warm to host a major winter sporting event again, the researchers report.

As warming trends continue, as few as six former Winter Olympic sites will be suitably cold enough to host the games again. The climate estimates used to draw these conclusions were on the conservative end of the spectrum, the researchers added.

Sochi 2014 will be the 22nd Winter Olympic Games. The majority of games locations have been different each time, but some cities have hosted more than one Winter Games, including Lake Placid (US), St. Moritz (Switzerland) and Innsbruck (Austria).

Protect Our Winters, a non-profit group that engages the winter sports community to fight against climate change, responded to the study.

"This report clearly points out the challenges that lie ahead for the Olympics because of climate change," said Chris Steinkamp, executive director of Protect Our Winters. "It's particularly powerful to see how past Olympic host cities could be impacted under a higher emission scenario, so hopefully this will serve as a wake up call to the [International Olympic Committee] and world leaders that major commitments to carbon reductions need to be made."

Steinkamp was not involved in the study.

Average February daytime temperatures have been steadily increasing as decades go by. At winter games locations the average daytime temperature has risen from 0.4 degrees Celsius (33 degrees Fahrenheit) in the 1920s through the 1950s to 7.8 C (46 F) for winter games held in the 21 st century.

"Today it would be difficult to imagine successfully delivering the diverse Games program exclusively on natural ice and snow, as it was in the early decades of the Olympic Winter Games," said Robert Steiger of the Management Center Innsbruck.