While Italy gears up to host the 2026 Winter Olympics, kicking off on Feb. 6 in Milano Cortina, the winter sports community is planning to present a letter to the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Feb. 4 expressing concerns over the risks that a warming planet poses to the longevity of winter sports due to excessive greenhouse gas emissions.
The petition will also condemn professional skiing and snowboarding for promoting fossil fuel corporations that contribute to global pollution— especially as the supermajor oil company Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI) is one of the main sponsors of this year’s Winter Olympics— and as similar companies support many national teams.
“This is a moment where the world is looking at winter sports and paying attention to these athletes and listening to their voices and watching what’s going on,” said professional alpine climber with Protect Our Winters (POW) Graham Zimmerman, “and that means it is a crucial moment for us to be using that… to talk about climate and… the impacts we’re seeing on winter.”
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that the snow cover extent for the Northern Hemisphere during the August 2024 to July 2025 period averaged 23.9 million square kilometers– one million square kilometers below the 1991-2020 mean. As 2025 was ranked the third-warmest year since global records began in 1850, the planet is rapidly approaching the 1.5°C (34.7°F) critical warming threshold that scientists deem a point of no return.
With snowfall becoming less consistent and winter precipitation beginning to show up more frequently as rain, a University of Waterloo study estimates that of the 93 host locations that meet the IOC’s qualifications for hosting the winter games, only 52 would meet the criteria for the Olympics and 22 for the Paralympics if countries don’t change their climate policies.
“I think that a lot of people kind of get zoned in on the sports aspect of it, but warming winters have so many more impacts than just on sports,” said Kaitlyn Trudeau, senior research associate for climate science at Climate Central. “There’s a lot of impacts that cascade throughout our lives, but sports is an obvious one… because without winters, you can’t have winter sports.”
Artificial Snow: An Unsustainable Quick Fix
A 2024 study found that between 2000 and 2019, the average ski season shortened by 5.5 to 7.1 days. Economic losses due to decreased skier visits and increased dependency on artificial snowmaking were estimated to cost $252 million annually in the United States. Across the U.S., artificial snow makes up for 20% of skiable acreage, but in places like Italy and Austria, 90% and 75% of skiable acreage is covered by snowmaking, respectively.
According to Eurac Research, the Alps as a whole experienced a 34% decrease in snowfall between 1920 and 2020. Southern parts of the Alps, which include northwestern Italy, experienced a 50% decrease in snowfall over the analyzed 100 years. To combat dwindling snowpack due to warming temperatures, Italy is relying on 1.6 million cubic meters of artificial snow for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
“There’s a huge energy suck of running [snow guns],” said Ben Tracy, a journalist with Climate Central. “There’s a huge water resource issue, so there’s cascading problems. Even if you had the ideal conditions to use them, you’re depleting other resources to do so.”
Snow guns spray water into cold air, and as the droplets fall, they freeze and become artificial snow. According to the sustainability consulting company Hedgehog, snowmaking can use approximately 405 liters of water per minute, which is equivalent to if 40 household taps were left running.
In 2023, researchers from the Universities of Innsbruck and Waterloo studied the skiing industry and snowmaking practices in Canada. They found that the annual energy consumption of 17,000 homes is required for the country to produce the 42 million cubic meters of fake snow needed to sustain its winter sports resorts, which causes approximately 130,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
“We always try to find some sort of solution or what people are doing to respond and adapt, but ultimately,… it comes down to if we continue to pump fossil fuels, emissions into the atmosphere, things are going to continue to warm, and this is going to continue to be a problem,” Tracy said.
Too Warm for Winter Sports
Athletes like Zimmerman have experienced the effects of winter warming firsthand. In 2021, he and others were climbing K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth, and the highest point in Pakistan. To the group’s surprise, at 23,000 feet, they were experiencing temperatures of 42°F in the shade. K2’s summit reaches 28,251 feet, where temperatures are usually supposed to be well below -85°F.
During the same climb, Zimmerman and the group were stuck on a ledge for about 14 hours, dodging avalanches and rockfall as the mountain suffered the consequences of solar radiation. He hopes that efforts in combating climate change will help preserve the ability to participate in winter sports and keep the Olympics alive.
“It’s really been a rallying cry for me personally for us to leverage our stories from these high places… to drive the change that we need… so that we can continue to have winter games, but also so that we can be protecting those frontline and fenceline communities that are actually seeing these impacts on a day-to-day basis,” Zimmerman said.
Even past snow sports, events such as figure skating, speed skating and curling will need to be held indoors as Milan is warming. Data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) shows that the number of freezing days in the Italian city decreased from 24.8 days in the 20th century to 10.5 since 2000.
Trudeau says that the technology needed to keep these venues cold enough will have high energy costs in the warming city.
“Looking out into the future, unless we address human-caused climate change and the fossil fuel burning that we’re doing, the possibility of having Winter Olympics is literally melting away,” she said.