<
https://www.futurity.org/winter-olympics-snow-climate-chnage-temperature-2690232-2/>
"Changing snow conditions have made it increasingly difficult for host cities
to have enough snow for athletes to participate in their respective winter
sports. To address this, Japanese scientists invented a formula for artificial
snow that’s been in use since the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York.
This year’s games in Beijing will be the first to use almost 100% artificial
snow, requiring an estimated 49 million gallons of water, 130 fan-operated snow
generators, and 300 snowmaking guns to create the 1.2 million cubic meters
(about 42,377,600 cubic feet) of snow, according to the report.
“For everything to work, event organizers need to be able to access a huge
supply of water and to power all that equipment. And even still, they need
favorable weather conditions to keep the artificial snow in optimal
conditions—after all, even fake snow melts,” says associate professor Tim
Kellison, co-director of Georgia State University’s Center for Sport and Urban
Policy and a coauthor of the report.
“The process of artificial snowmaking itself can come at a heavy environmental
cost, especially because of all the water that’s used. But all of this
infrastructure also costs a lot of money, something an Olympic host city might
be able to absorb, but less possible at lower levels of these winter sports.”
Artificial snow not only requires significant resources and infrastructure to
create, but it also has an impact on winter athletes’ ability to train and
safely compete."
Via Rᴀʙ-ʙyt.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
