Where will future Winter Olympic Games be held in a warming climate?

Waterloo professor helps advise the IOC decision to select the host location for the 2030 Winter Olympic Games. By Chantal Vallis Waterloo Climate Institute - As winter changes across the Northern Hemisphere, sporting bodies like the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are forced to reassess the best way to host the globally celebrated games on a warming planet. To assist with this unprecedented task, in November the IOC invited Dr. Daniel Scott, Canada Research Chair and professor in Waterloo's Department of Geography and Environmental Management, and his colleague Professor Robert Steiger from the University of Innsbruck to discuss their research and recommendations with the Future Host Commission. Their research demonstrates that mountains at former Winter Olympic host locations are warming much faster than the global average. Combined with the selection of warmer host locations, the average daytime high temperature has increased from near 0°C when the games began to more than 7°C in recent games. Future climate change will further test the limits of the IOC's many weather-risk management strategies. Looking to the future, the research finds that climate change will increasingly impact the Games over the twenty-first century.