Professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones has explored unique and pristine winter slopes around the world on his snowboard. However, over the last few years, resorts that used to have reliable snow started closing more frequently.
Some mountains have been getting significantly more rain than snow. For Jones and many fellow winter enthusiasts, climate change has become impossible to ignore.
It’s not just snowboarding — climate change is already having an impact on several winter activities, including the outdoor sports on display at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
On average, winters have been warming up faster than summers, and northern latitudes are warming even faster than regions closer to the equator.
This means that sports counting on outdoor snow and ice are vulnerable. In a warming world, few cities may be reliably cold with enough snow and ice to host the Winter Olympics of the future.
Jeremy Jones founded the advocacy group Protect Our Winters with the main goal of uniting winter sports enthusiasts in the fight against climate change.
With the world’s eyes on the Winter Games, athletes-turned-advocates are looking to channel that attention toward the ways climate change threatens their sports. Their latest report, “Slippery Slopes: How Climate Change is threatening the 2022 Winter Olympics,” says that without drastic action, many of the sports that thrill fans and athletes are becoming more and more endangered.
