How are the Winter Olympics affected by climate change?

These are pictures of two Winter Olympics. What is the difference between the two? The Salt Lake Olympics were held 20 years ago and conducted using natural snow whereas the Beijing Olympics are being conducted by using almost 100% artificial snow.
As the climate crisis becomes more aggressive, this could become the norm for future olympics. According to *researchers this exercise is energy and water intensive.
*At the Sport Ecology Group at Loughborough University in England and the Protect Our Winters environment group.

In a region that is already struggling with water scarcity, over 45 million gallons of water is being chemically treated to generate snow in Beijing. The need for artificial snow came about as snow became more erratic in low lying areas where snow sports are practiced. Warming induced by climate change is putting the snow sports industry across the world at risk, forcing governments to resort to artificial solutions. This makes the activities more expensive, exclusive and closed to newer talent.

Out of the 21 venues used since the first Chamonix Winter Olympics held in 1924, only about 10 are feasible for winter sports now. The ‘unreliable’ venues are likely to be affected by unexpected fog and wind, erratic rain and difficulty in practice and rehearsals since snow will not be easy to come by. Chamonix itself is deemed dangerous for winter sports apart from cities across Grenoble(France), Innsbruck(Austria) and Cortina d’Ampezzo and Turin(Italy). Competition venues in Garmisch-Partenkirchen(Germany) and Sochi(Russia) were deemed unreliable from the start by the researchers.Sapporo & Nagano (Japan), Pyeongchang (South Korea) might become snowless soon as rain replaces snow precipitation.

Artificial snow is 30% snow and 70% air whereas natural snow is 10% ice and 90% air. This will change how snowboards will move on snow. Since the snow is artificial, it is hard to say how it will react once the athletes start practicing on it. This also increases the expenditure of the games (estimated to be over 3 billion dollars).

But the major problem is that the temperatures are still rising.This will soften the snow and make it spray during practice, reducing visibility, making athletes skid and increasing the probability of accidents. While it can be argued that threatened winter sports might be one of the less devastating impacts of climate change, they’re responsible for generating millions of jobs across the world and stimulating the economy. They also urge people who live in extremely cold conditions for months together, to step out and engage with the community. M oreover, it adds to yet another factor in the reminders that we already have to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

[joelsalazar]

How about going to a place with natural snow 🤣