Abnormal climate threatens the Winter Olympics: What will happen to the future of the Winter Olympics if there is no natural snowfall?

Written by: Liu Fang

Editor: Wang Haha

Layout: Li Xuewei

What are the essential elements of the Winter Olympics? Is it the cute ice or the heroic athletes? In fact, the prerequisite for the success of the Winter Olympics is snowfall.

However, due to global climate change, the number of venues around the world that meet the natural conditions for hosting the Winter Olympics is gradually decreasing. If there is no natural snowfall, what will be the future of the Winter Olympics?

The birth of artificial snow

Initially, almost all events in the Winter Olympics were held outdoors. But by the 1980s, sports such as ice hockey, figure skating, speed skating and curling had moved to indoor ice rinks. For the various competitive sports that remained outdoors, countries began to use artificial snow to make up for the lack of natural snow.

In fact, the magical snow machine that sprays snowflakes all over the sky was born in the movie industry. In 1934, Louis Geib, technical director of Warner Bros., invented the first prototype of a snow machine in Burbank, which consisted of three spinning blades that shaved ice from a 400-pound block of snow and a powerful fan that blew the resulting ice and snow particles into the air.

Image | People feed ice into a snow machine at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1938. (Source: Smithsonian Magazine)

This dream machine, originally designed for movies, was also warmly welcomed on the skating rink. In the winter of 1934, the Toronto Ski Club redesigned a snow machine based on the same principle. At that time, the club stated that artificial snow was "much better than real snow."

The first known commercial snow machine was invented by a Connecticut ski company (Tey Manufacturing Corporation). The company's snowboard sales plummeted due to the decrease in snowfall in the winter of 1949. So three partners, Art Hunt, Wayne Piells and Dave Riceh, came together to create a snow machine using a paint spray compressor, a nozzle and a rubber hose. In April 1954, this snow machine was awarded US Patent No. 2,676,471.

In recent years, winter snowfall has become increasingly unpredictable due to climate change. According to the Times, since the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, the proportion of artificial snow in the Winter Olympics has been rising. About 80% of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, used artificial snow, and the figure was as high as 90% in the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics in South Korea. At this year's Beijing Winter Olympics, artificial snow covered most of the venues, and the snowmaking machines were provided by the Italian company TechnoAlpin.

Figure | TechnoAlpin snow machine TR10 (Source: TechnoAlpin official website)

Artificial snow, is it an acceptable future?

First, the water demand for artificial snow is huge. The Beijing Olympic Committee estimates that 49 million gallons of water will be needed to make snow for the alpine sports of the Winter Olympics, enough to fill 3,600 backyard swimming pools and equivalent to the drinking water of nearly 100 million people for a day. This year's Winter Olympics will require at least 1.2 million cubic meters of snow to cover the approximately 800,000 square meters of competition venues.

According to a recent survey by Loughborough University in the UK, 95% of ski resorts around the world currently rely on artificial snow to some extent. Either to ensure the quality of skiing, or to extend the ski season, or both. The manufacture and maintenance of artificial snow have certain requirements for temperature and humidity. Under humidity conditions of less than 30%, it can be produced at a temperature of around 3°C. But under humidity conditions greater than 60%, artificial snow needs to be produced at freezing or lower temperatures.

To overcome these production constraints, snowmakers often add chemical or biological additives to the water. The organizers of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics added pesticides to artificial snow to make the water freeze at a higher temperature. Snow solidifiers may also be added to the water to make the snow on the ski resort last longer. These additives inevitably bring certain environmental risks to water and soil resources.

In terms of physical properties, artificial snow is also very different from natural snowfall. Physicist Ken Libbrecht told Vox that natural snowfall begins to crystallize as a small droplet of water only a few microns wide, which forms around a core like a speck of dust in the air. A snowflake usually takes about an hour to grow from the inside out, as its core absorbs water vapor from the surrounding air to form a perfectly symmetrical hexagon. Mechanically made artificial snow freezes instantly, rather than growing naturally in the atmosphere. Therefore, natural snowfall is only 5%-10% ice, and air accounts for 90%-95%. Artificial snow is nearly 30% ice and 70% air, and the surface is also rougher and harder. This feature may bring more challenges to athletes.

Figure | The difference between natural snow (left) and artificial snow (right) under a microscope (Source: Kenneth G. Libbrecht)

Comparing the data of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, it can be found that the number of participants injured in alpine skiing, freestyle skiing and snowboarding increased by 9%, and the completion rate decreased by 5%. Research by Derman, W., Blauwet and other scholars from the University of Brighton in the UK also showed that the injury rate of alpine skiing athletes in the Sochi Winter Paralympics increased sixfold compared with the previous period, and about one-third of the athletes were injured in this event.

Behind these data are negative factors of climate and artificial snow.

If climate change continues, where will the Winter Olympics be held?

In recent years, scientists led by Daniel Scott, a scholar at the University of Waterloo in Canada, have been tracking the possible impact of climate change on the Winter Olympics.

Over the past century, the average daytime temperature in February in the 21 Winter Olympic host cities has been rising steadily, from 0.4 degrees Celsius in the 1920s to 1950s, to 3.1 degrees Celsius in the 1960s to 1990s, and to 6.3 degrees Celsius in the 21st century (including the temperature forecast for the Beijing Winter Olympics). It is not easy to create a piece of ice and snow that meets the requirements of competitive sports at an average temperature of 6.3 degrees Celsius.

However, the trend of global warming continues. Based on compliance with the Paris Climate Agreement, the fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations divides climate change into four levels: PCP2.6, PCR4.5, PCR6 and PCR8.5, with RCP2.6 as the best forecast and RCP8.5 as the worst forecast.

According to the latest report by Daniel Scott et al., under the low emission pathway (RCP 2.6), the average temperature in February of the 21 Winter Olympic host cities will rise by 1.9°C by the middle of this century. Under the high emission pathway (RCP 8.5), the average temperature in February of the host cities will rise by 2.1°C by the middle of this century.

This means that if no timely action is taken to address climate change, by the end of this century, only Sapporo, Japan, of the 21 former hosts will be able to host the Winter Olympics again, and all other cities will be eliminated. Beijing will lose the climatic conditions to host the Winter Olympics in 2050.

(Source: Slippery Slope)

In such a severe situation, scientists around the world have been working hard to create more natural snow. One method is to spread silver iodide in the clouds, with the aim of promoting the transformation of moisture in the clouds into falling snow crystals. Another method, which sounds even more magical, is to grow snowflakes in the laboratory to imitate the process of natural crystal formation. But so far, neither method can meet the demand for natural snow required for the Winter Olympics.

Weather and snow conditions have been key determinants of the success of the Games since the first Winter Games were held in Chamonix, France, in 1924. The 1984 Yugoslav organizers wrote: "Even superhuman efforts cannot conquer nature."

Using artificial snow to make up for the lack of natural snowfall to host the Winter Olympics seems to be a victory over nature, but in the near future, when the average daily temperature rises by another 2.1°C, will we still be able to cheer in the ice and snow world? Artificial snow may be part of the answer to the future of the Winter Olympics, but it is by no means the whole answer.

References:

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/04/weather/artificial-snow-beijing-olympics-climate/index.html

https://time.com/6146039/artificial-snow-2022-olympics-beijing/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13683500.2021.2023480?src=&

https://www.sportecology.org/_files/ugd/a700be_9aa3ec697a39446eb11b8330aec19e30.pdf

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13683500.2018.1436161

https://www.vox.com/2022/2/10/22926270/artificial-snow-beijing-2022-olympics-climate-change

Source: Academic Headlines