14 DAY TRIAL // A new paper authored by researchers working with the University of Waterloo in Canada and the Management Center Innsbruck in Austria warns that the Winter Olympics are threatened by climate change and global warning.
The specialists say that, after analyzing several climate models, they found that, thanks to an increase in global average temperatures, just 6 of the cities that have until now housed this celebration will remain cold enough to play host to the Winter Olympics by the end of the century.
What's more, odds are that, in the coming decades, just 11 of the previous 19 host cities of the Winter Olympics will not have become too hot so as not to be able to accommodate for this celebration, Click Green reports.
In their paper, the researchers go on to argue that, if their predictions are accurate, Olympic sites such as Squaw Valley in the United States, Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany, Vancouver in Canada, and Sochi in Russia will no longer be climatically suitable to host the Winter Olympics by the middle of this century.
To put things into perspective, it must be said that, back in the 1920-50s, the average February daytime temperature documented at Winter Olympics locations was one of 0.4 degrees Celsius (32.72 degrees Fahrenheit).
By the 1960-90s, said temperature upped to 3.1 degrees Celsius (37.58 degrees Fahrenheit), and, in the 21st century, it was documented to be one of 7.8 degrees Celsius (46.04 degrees Fahrenheit).
Specialists say that, by mid-century, it could reach 9.7 – 9.9 degrees Celsius (49.46 – 49.82 degrees Fahrenheit), and that, a few decades later, it might soar to 10.5 – 12.2 degrees Celsius (50.9 – 53.96 degrees Fahrenheit).
“The cultural legacy of the world's celebration of winter sport is increasingly at risk. Fewer and fewer traditional winter sports regions will be able to host a Olympic Winter Games in a warmer world,” says researcher Daniel Scott.
“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 IOC [International Olympic Committee] and world leaders that major commitments to carbon reductions need to be made,” adds Chris Steinkamp with green group Protect Our Winters.