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Study published in-part by University of Waterloo examines climate change and future of Winter Olympics

Neil Acharya

The balmy conditions at Sochi 2014 are rare for the Winter Olympics, but not necessarily a new thing. For example, just four years ago in Vancouver, there were issues with snow at Cypress Mountain - the site of the freestyle skiing and snowboard events. Just over two decades earlier at Calgary 1988, the effects of a Chinook may have had visitors wondering if they had mistakenly landed at the site of the Summer Olympics.

"One can only wonder how many @Chinook Twitter accounts would have been created during the 1988 Calgary Olympics. The daytime high one day during the '88 Games approached that of Miami — Miami, Florida., not Miami, Manitoba."

(Neate Sager, Yahoo Eh Game, Feb. 13, 2014)

Even though Sochi, which has a subtropical climate, is experiencing relatively normal weather patterns right now, is there something amiss?

A recent article in The Atlantic suggests there is.

Writer Uri Friedman breaks down the findings of a study on the relation of climate change to the future of the Winter Olympics. It was published last month in-part by the University of Waterloo.

"As a result of global warming, as few as six of the previous 19 Winter Olympics host cities—less than a third—will be cold enough to hold the Games by the end of this century. "In a substantially warmer world, celebrating the second centennial of the Olympic Winter Games in 2124 would be challenging," the report's authors wrote. You can't ski safely or successfully in slush.

The study, conducted by the University of Waterloo in Canada and the Management Center Innsbruck in Austria, calculated the average daytime high in past Winter Olympics locations in February, the month in which the Games are nearly always held, and plotted the results in three-decade increments. They found that temperatures have been steadily increasing from 32 degrees Fahrenheit between the 1920s and 1950s to 46 degrees so far this century (the first Winter Olympics were held in 1924, in France).

The report doesn't suggest that Sochi's warm weather is itself a sign of climate change (the subtropical city's current temperature is consistent with what it's usually like this time of year). But it does indicate that the weather-related problems we're seeing in Sochi could grow more frequent in future Winter Olympics.

In forecasting the future of the Winter Olympics, the researchers made certain assumptions. They used international climate data and projections for greenhouse-gas emissions to generate low and high estimates for the amount that average February temperatures will increase in former Winter Olympics host cities over time. The baseline is the average February temperature at these locations between 1981 and 2010. The authors, in other words, are predicting that, based on conservative estimates, the temperature in, say, Turin, Italy in February 2050 will increase by three degrees because of climate change."

(The Atlantic, Feb. 12, 2014)

According to the study, Calgary is one of the six former host cities that would be "climate reliable" to host the Olympics by the 2080's while Vancouver is projected to be "not climatically reliable"- even if estimated green-house gas emissions were in the low range. Moreover, at best - the city would be "climatically high risk" as a potential host by the 2050's

Just a few days ago, a group called Protect our Winters, which says it represents the global snow sports community, cited the study in a statement "calling on world leaders to take action on climate change and to prepare a commitment to a global agreement prior to the Paris climate talks in 2015."

Amongst the 105 Olympians that signed the statement and accompanying letter written by Andrew Newell of the U.S. Ski Team were four Canadians: Rosanna Crawford (biathalon), Daria (Dasha) Gaiazova (cross country), Taylor Henrich (ski jumping) and Atsuko Tanaka (ski jumping).