Of 21 Winter Olympic Cities, Many May Soon Be Too Warm to Host the Games
Distill the upcoming Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, to their essence and you get 15 sports that involve gliding on snow or ice. Because of climate change, though, by 2050 many prior Winter Games locations may be too warm to ever host the Games again.
A team of researchers, led by Daniel Scott, a geography professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, came to that conclusion by taking climate data from previous Winter Games locations and applying climate-change models to predict future winter weather conditions.
The research, originally published in 2014, was updated this month to include the Pyeongchang Olympics, which begin Feb. 9, and the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
photo credit: Kris Krug