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2020 Summer Olympics in danger due to lack of snow

Author: Tom Wannenmacher

2020 Summer Olympics in danger due to lack of snow
2020 Summer Olympics in danger due to lack of snow

The upcoming 2020 Summer Olympics will take place in the small Japanese town of Minamiuonuma. But the games are threatened by the current warm temperatures.

The problem of the Summer Olympics in a nutshell:

The current winter in Japan has been very weak with far too little snow. However, snow is important for the Summer Games because it is needed to cool the stadiums. Otherwise they will heat up too much.

The upcoming 2020 Summer Olympics will take place in the small Japanese town of Minamiuonuma. But the games are threatened by the current warm temperatures.

Summer Olympics 2020: So far, compared to previous years, there is only 15 percent of the average annual amount of snow. The small town with 55,000 inhabitants in Niigata Prefecture is usually blessed with plenty of snow.

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In normal winters, the city is covered in snow up to the rooftops and is a true paradise for winter sports enthusiasts. Two thirds of Japanese ski resorts (unlike their European counterparts) do not use snow cannons or artificial snow. But this year there is simply no snow.

This can also become a big problem for the upcoming summer games.

How does the massive snowfall usually happen? In normal winters, humid and cold air blows from the Asian continent and brings huge amounts of snow to the region, which has now become a real tourist attraction.

This year, however, there was no snowfall due to unusual warmth and, above all, dryness. The statistics give reason to fear the worst: by the end of January 2019, the rainfall in the affected region was over 770 centimeters. At the end of January 2020 it was only a pitiful 127 centimeters.

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The lack of snow is also causing the ski strongholds to tremble; many ski areas are only partially usable and many ski lifts are closed due to the lack of snow.
With regard to the 2020 Summer Games, this raises doubts about the feasibility of hosting it. In Japan, temperatures reach up to 41 degrees in the venues in summer, which means an unreasonable burden even for professional athletes and makes it impossible to achieve top sporting performance. The heat hit the population particularly hard last year. In 2019, over 1,000 people died in Japan from the summer heat, and the massive consumption of electricity for air conditioning almost caused the electricity suppliers to collapse. The solution to cooling: snow instead of electricity.

To combat this heat, the Japanese government came up with the idea of ​​simply importing tons of snow from snow-rich regions for the Olympics in the summer and storing it in the stadia. But this is where the crux of the matter lies. Due to the lack of snowfall in the mountains, massive storage of the snow needed to cool the venues is also not possible.

The local ski lift and ski slope operators are concerned about the future.

Climate change has therefore also reached the heights of Japan. If the trend continues in the future, the existence of natural snow reserves in the affected areas will be threatened.

In summary, Japan is struggling with a phenomenon that has also plagued European ski resorts for years, namely the lack of snow due to persistent warmth and drought and the natural snow reserves being permanently threatened. In Europe, almost all areas have already started producing snow artificially, although the chemical composition varies depending on the legal situation.

The lack of snow represents a fundamental problem for the upcoming Summer Games in Japan, as the snow required for cooling could not be stored in time and therefore cannot withstand the heat in the stadiums.

This is a Greenkama content. Greenkama is a Mimikama project, because conscious environmental and climate protection must be a question of responsibility and encouragement! More Greenkama content here !

Sources:
ORF: Lack of snow in Japan: Plans for the Olympics are shaky
Tagesanzeiger: Japan is in a snow crisis
Author: Alexander Herberstein

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