Will climate change hurt chances of 2022 Winter Olympics bid cities?

Snow complaints in Sochi and Vancouver might just be the tip of the melting iceberg

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      The following article was originally published by Daily Climate.

      When the temperature settled into the mid-50s Fahrenheit at the recently ended Sochi Winter Olympics, snowboarders were furious at the slushy condition of the halfpipe.

      Four years ago at the Vancouver Olympics, rain and fog delayed downhill skiing events, and organizers resorted to straw bales to build jumps and obstacles for courses where snow proved scarce.

      None of this bodes well for future Olympics.

      A warming climate may rule out venues such as Sochi or Vancouver in the future. But five cities vying to host the 2022 Winter Olympics also could be confounding athletes with unusually warm weather eight years from now.

      Five cities face 150-year highs

      All of the candidate cities—Almaty, Kazakhstan; Beijing, China; Krakow, Poland; Lviv, Ukraine; and Oslo, Norway—will likely be facing temperatures near the upper limits of what each region has experienced in the past 150 years, according to a Daily Climate analysis of climate models constructed by University of Hawaii, Manoa, geographer Camilo Mora and colleagues.

      Mora’s models merge temperature records with climate forecasts to predict when the temperature for any given region “departs” from its historic range.

      But it’s also possible, using the models, to show where the temperatures might be in the 2020s. All five cities being considered by the International Olympic Committee for the 2022 games will likely be in the upper half of the hottest weather records they’ve seen over the past century-and-a-half.

      The data suggest that high altitudes and northern latitudes may be an increasingly important factor in siting future Olympic venues.

      “Winters are going to get shorter. There will be fewer days below freezing. In fact, that is already happening,” Mora said.

      No IOC comment on future decisions

      The International Olympic Committee declined to speculate on how climate projections might affect siting decisions for future winter games.

      Weather data are collected during the bidding process, IOC spokeswoman Sandrine Tonge said in an email, and assessed by a commission that provides a “detailed report” to IOC members before the vote.

      The host city for the 2022 Winter Olympics will be announced in 2015.

      The IOC first mentioned climate change in its official report of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.

      The five cities, some of which plan to hold snow events as far as 210 kilometres away, must complete a 250-page questionnaire, which includes a section on climate and weather conditions. Cities are asked to list average high and low temperatures as well as precipitation for the month of February at each venue.

      Host cities not asked to predict

      But the questionnaire, which asks for averages based on weather conditions during the past 10 years, does not require cities to anticipate how climate may change in the seven to eight years between bidding and hosting the games.

      Mora’s models do show only average annual temperature—collapsing seasonal extremes into one number for the year. They do not show how soon or to what extent winter conditions in the bid cities could become unsuitable for hosting the games.

      And although computer models have become much more sophisticated, they still have difficulty predicting future temperatures for precise regions.

      “The models show nothing about projected winter change. Usually the winter-season change in the Northern Hemisphere is more pronounced,” said Daniel Scott, professor of tourism management at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

      But the data do put the warming trend into vivid relief. And they suggest that a look back at the past 10 years of climate data would offer little bearing on what Olympic athletes would face come 2022.

      Past decade's data of little help

      Almaty, in central Asia, for instance, may have a completely different climate as soon as 2024 if global greenhouse-gas emissions continue under a “business as usual” scenario, based on Mora’s data.

      Beijing and its cohost to the north, Zhangjiakou, where the snow events would be held, aren’t much far behind. Mora’s models suggest Zhangjiakou could leave its historical climate behind as early as 2032.

      Almaty, in Central Asia, could have a completely different climate as soon as 2024 if global greenhouse-gas emissions continue unchecked.

      Mountain towns will be like Black Sea resorts

      The mountain towns of Tysovets, Ukraine, and Jasná, Slovakia, where Lviv and Krakow propose hosting alpine events, would begin to look more like Black Sea resorts such as Odessa, Constanta, or Sochi by the 2050s, based on data from Charles Koven, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

      The most northern city in the running for the 2022 Olympics, Oslo, can expect to stay within its climate norms the longest—to 2060 or beyond.

      “High-latitude places often have late climate departures, but that does not necessarily mean climate change won’t impact those places,” Mora said.

      Although Mora’s models, based on yearly average temperatures, don’t forecast monthly highs, lows, or precipitation changes, they do show warming trends.

      The “departure point”, Mora cautioned, signifies “the year after which the climate we knew is gone for good”.

      In a report published last month, the University of Waterloo’s Scott found that average February temperatures for the 19 previous Winter Olympic host cities could be expected to rise between 3.4 and 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, and up to eight degrees Fahrenheit by 2090, leaving only six previous host cities cold enough to host the Games 75 years from now.

      Vancouver, Sochi, and Squaw Valley out of future plans

      Places such as Squaw Valley, Vancouver, and Sochi would no longer have cold enough winters to host again, while cities like Lake Placid or Nagano, Japan, would be iffy.

      Sochi, the subtropical Black Sea resort town, boasts February daytime highs around 50 and lows in the mid-30s, putting it climatically on par with Richmond, Virginia. Snow events such as alpine skiing and snowboarding were held at the Rosa Khutor resort, an 80-kilometre drive from Sochi in the Caucasus Mountains.

      Snowmaking has made warmer venues possible in recent years, according to Scott’s report.

      At Sochi, organizers enlisted three $2-million snowmaking units capable of creating snow at temperatures up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit to ensure good track coverage at the Nordic combined and ski-jump events.

      But there are limits to snowmaking as an adaptation for climate change, Scott said. “Can you make enough snow and not have it melt? If that is doable physically, then it is an economics question.”

      Added Mora: “It will be interesting to see how cities around the world who rely on winter sports will be forced to invest as a result of climate change.”

      Comments

      3 Comments

      AC

      Mar 6, 2014 at 5:30pm

      Countries with claims in Antarctica should forward a bid. Nice and cold there...good altitude. Unless the Soviets and China planted another flag on the continental shelf under the ocean making it theirs of course.

      NB

      Mar 7, 2014 at 7:30am

      Ok lets not go to far here. Remember just two years prior to the 2010 olympics in vancouver we had one of the biggest snow falls in our cities history. Sochi has never been a cold place. Palm trees grow there for christ sake. Its an hour flight from Iran!.

      Im not denying climate change, but to say its going to be the future for winder games is a stretch. Consider how many of the games in 2010 were held in Whistler. Its not like Whistler has an issue with snow.

      Its not hard to find cold places. Its not that everything is getting warmer, its that climate is changing and shifting.

      Kiskatinawkid

      Mar 7, 2014 at 5:25pm

      The real concern of people should be climate change, not winter olympics, or summer ones for that matter. Both contribute more than their share to the problem. And I don't want to hear that crap about "greenest olympics ever". What a crock!
      Olympics are about "development". Period. Sports are nothing more then the hookers sent out on the stroll to attract the desperate and needy.