Of 21 Winter Olympic Cities, Many May Soon Be Too Warm to Host the Games<br />Pyeongchang, South Korea<br />Eight host locations<br />Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy<br />St. Mortiz, Switzerland<br />In Sochi, whose mild climate made it an unusual choice for the Winter Games, organizers banked<br />snow from the previous winter, storing it in shady places and covering it with insulation.<br />According to Dr. Scott’s research, using emissions projections in which global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise through midcentury<br />and global temperatures increase by 4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, nine of the host locations will be too hot to handle the Games.<br />Because of climate change, though, by 2050 many prior Winter Games locations may be too warm to ever host the Games again.<br />When the temperatures are above freezing, as they were during the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver<br />and the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, you have to turn to more extreme measures.<br />Despite these efforts, athletes at both Games complained of poor snow that they said led to unfair conditions.<br />A team of researchers, led by Daniel Scott, a geography professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, came to<br />that conclusion by taking climate data from previous Winter Games locations and applying climate-change models to predict future winter weather conditions.
