Winter Olympics and Climate Change

As the 2026 Winter Olympic Games begin in Milano–Cortina, it is time to lift our eyes from the medal competitions and look instead at the logistical and ecological wreckage behind the slopes. Back in 2014, the climate modeling work our team at iklimBU conducted during the Lillehammer 2022 candidacy process had already placed these cold realities—now largely ignored by the sports world—squarely on the table.

The Winter Olympics increasingly resemble not a celebration of sport, but a logistical war against nature fought with technology — and one that is already lost in advance. Over the past half-century, the clear shortening of winter across the Northern Hemisphere and the melting of snowpacks in mountainous regions have steadily narrowed the geographical boundaries within which the Games can be organized, trapping us in a dangerous form of technological optimism.

Artificial snow, embraced by Olympic committees and broadcasters to preserve the illusion of a white winter landscape, is in fact one of the greatest “false hopes” developed to conceal the impacts of the climate crisis on skiing. The rational limits behind this solution can be summarized under three main headings:

• Physical Thresholds: Snow machines are not magicians; above certain wet-bulb temperature thresholds, they simply spray water. For example, at 5 °C, artificial snow production becomes impossible if relative humidity exceeds 5%. Once temperatures rise above 5 °C, producing artificial snow becomes nearly impossible under most conditions. Even in traditional ski centers such as Oslo, the number of suitable days for artificial snow production during February has declined dramatically. In research we conducted for the 2022 Winter Olympics, this window had already fallen to nearly four days per month.
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  Water Management and a Strategic Mistake: The volume of water required to cover a massive Olympic course places destructive pressure on local ecosystems. At a time when water scarcity represents a global risk, extracting millions of cubic meters of water from ecosystems only to freeze it for a 16-day event is not a sustainable adaptation strategy — it is, rather, an example of maladaptation.
  
• The Energy Paradox: Today’s claims of climate positivity directly contradict the enormous energy consumption of snowmaking systems and the carbon intensity of that energy. The cumulative carbon dioxide emissions associated with producing, storing, transporting, and distributing artificial snow fundamentally undermine the environmental legitimacy of the Games.

The modeling work we carried out with the iklimBU group placed scientific datasets — not nostalgic expectations — at its center. We demonstrated scientifically how even a winter sports stronghold like Lillehammer was losing snow reliability under changing climate parameters. Our study clearly showed that the current single-city model of the Winter Olympics has reached the end of its lifespan; unless the Games transition toward a regional and multi-center structure, they will simply become unviable.

The data are clear: by mid-century, only a fraction of the 21 cities that have previously hosted the Winter Olympics will remain climatically reliable for winter conditions. The scheduling of the Paralympic Games, extending into March, makes winter sports particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Another frequently proposed solution is to move ski resorts to higher elevations. Yet, as we know, geography imposes limits. If there is no higher mountain, there is nothing left to move to. Beyond that, higher elevations come with significant financial costs. Countries hosting events like the Winter Olympics prefer to use existing infrastructure and are often reluctant to invest in entirely new facilities. Our analysis of Lillehammer for the 2022 Games revealed precisely this dilemma: the existing course could not guarantee sufficient snow reliability, whereas moving the venue from 700 meters to 1,300 meters would have provided climate security — but only at the cost of constructing an entirely new ski resort. We all know how that story ended. The 2022 Winter Olympics were ultimately held in Beijing, where snow had to be transported by trucks.

What we are witnessing today in Milano–Cortina is humanity’s attempt to subdue nature through technology — an expression of human hubris. Yet this effort confines the Games to hard, artificial slopes on increasingly dry mountains, placing athlete safety at risk and increasing rates of collisions, impacts, and injuries — something competing athletes themselves will undoubtedly describe better than anyone else.

The future of the Winter Olympics does not lie in more advanced snow machines or in cosmetic solutions such as carbon offsetting. It lies in regional cooperation, radically earlier competition calendars, and above all, an honest confrontation with climate realities. The perspective we have presented as iklimBU moves beyond false hopes and may be the only path capable of preserving the dignity of winter sports.