A new report warns that warmer, shorter seasons are fueling greater demands for energy – and water-intensive snow canons, creating more dangerous conditions.

Climate change is threatening the future of the Winter Olympics and snow sports by eroding the season and forcing more dangerous, artificial conditions, experts have warned in a report published a week before the 2022 Games.

The Beijing Olympics, which start on 4 February, will be the first Winter Games to use almost 100% artificial snow, relying on more than 100 snow generators and 300 snow-cannons working flat-out to cover the ski slopes.

“This is not only energy and water intensive, frequently using chemicals to slow melt, but also delivers a surface that many competitors say is unpredictable and potentially dangerous,” said the Slippery Slopes report, produced by researchers at Loughborough University and the Protect Our Winters environment group.

‘This is dangerous’

Scottish freestyle skier Laura Donaldson warned that if “freestyle super pipes are formed from snow-making machines in a poor [natural snow] season, the walls of the pipe are solid, vertical ice and the pipe floor is solid ice”.

“This is dangerous for athletes,” she added.