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≡ A WINTER GAMES FUTURE? ≡
The good news is that there is a future for the Olympic Winter Games and the Paralympic Winter Games for the next 55 years, that is, there will be places where it is snowy and cold, even with climate change:
“Under a more probable mid-range emission scenario, 52 locations remain climate-reliable for the OWG in the 2050s and 46 in the 2080s. The scheduling of the PWG in March put it at higher risk, with only 22 climate-reliable locations in the 2050s and 16 in the 2080s.
“When a more stringent minimum snow depth requirement was applied, the number of reliable locations declined slightly for both OWG and PWG, signifying the importance of advanced sustainable snowmaking as an adaptation strategy.
“While it is inevitable that climate change will impact the geography and development of winter sports to some degree, a reassuring finding is that even with a diminished pool of potential host locations, with continued adaptation, the OWG-PWG can endure as a genuinely global celebration of sport.”
That’s the summary finding in the latest work from Daniel Scott from the University of Waterloo (CAN) Department of Geography and Environmental Management and Robert Steiger from the University of Innsbruck (AUT) Department of Public Finance in “Climate change and the climate reliability of hosts in the second century of the Winter Olympic Games,” from the November 2025 edition of Current Issues in Tourism research journal.
Scott, especially, has written extensively on this topic, with papers published in 2014, 2018 and 2022, about the future of the Olympic Winter Games and Winter Paralympics, and this review was “supported by the International Olympic Committee.” Steiger has also published examinations on the questions, notably in 2019 and 2020.
Based on the data in the 2019 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, “Warming in mountain regions is projected to continue at a rate of approximately 0.3°C per decade until the mid-twenty-first century (independent of the emission pathway), which remains slightly above rates of global warming.”
Also:
“[A]n analysis of historical average weather conditions at the OWG, indicating that from the 1920s to the 1950s, the average maximum daily temperature of host locations was 0.4°C. This figure rose to 3.1°C during the 1960s to 1990s, and further increased to 6.3°C in the games held in the twenty-first century (including the [2022] Beijing Games).”
(0.4 C = 32.7 F; 3.1 C = 37.6 F; 6.3 C = 43.3 F)
While the study worries about future Winter Games sites, it also notes the cupboard is hardly bare, referring to their past reviews and a threshold of 30 cm (11.8 inches) of snow:
“These studies found that, depending on the emission trajectory, 10–13 of 21 former OWG host locations will remain climatically reliable by the 2050s. This number will further decline to 8–12 locations by the 2080s. The PWG, scheduled after the OWG in the later part of the winter season (March) is more sensitive to climatic changes with only 8–10 out of 21 former PWG locations will remain reliable in the 2050s and only 4–10 in the 2080s.”
The new study looked at 93 possible locations for Winter Games, with the earlier Olympic Winter Games more reliable, of course. By the 2050s:
● 45-55 of 93 sites to produce reliable snow
● 20-28 of 93 sites marginally reliable
● 10-28 of 93 sites unreliable
By the 2080s, a worst-case scenario, about 35 sites would be at least marginally reliable. This could go down to just four sites out of 93 in a 2080s worst-case scenario for the Winter Paralympics, held in March.
So will there be places with snow, for biathlon, skiing and snowboarding, bobsled, luge and skeleton racing?
The study does not provide a list of names, but the map of sites deemed “reliable” for both the Olympic and Paralympic winter events shows:
● Canada: Alberta
● United States: Colorado, Utah, New York
● Asia/west: Turkey, Georgia
● Asia/central: Kazakhstan
● Asia/east: China, Japan
● Europe/north: Norway
● Europe/central: France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Italy
● Europe/east: Russia
● Europe/south: Spain
So there are places for the Winter Games for at least several more decades to come.
Observed: No big surprises here, as the study echoes prior findings, but is updated with a look at more possible sites, which is reassuring for the future.
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