Snowboarder Jeremy Jones has devoted his life to winter sports. But he noticed the season was getting shorter.
Two months before the Beijing Winter Olympics began, a few hundred snow cannons were already at work, pumping out fresh powder to coat the slopes of the Alpine Ski Center in Yanqing, about 56 miles from central Beijing.
Aside from these strips of glistening white snow, the mountains, which rise to an altitude of more than 2,000 meters , are dry and covered in brown scrub. Beijing 2022 will be the first Winter Olympics to rely almost entirely on fake snow, which some athletes have warned could create dangerous, icy conditions.The slopes at the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Centre are covered in human-made snow. But it's unlikely to be the last, as the climate crisis is shrinking our winters.
The snowboarder fighting to protect our winters 04:05 Jones says he's seen it rain on mountain peaks in the dead of winter and watched glaciers recede over time."Winters are often starting later, ending earlier and just more extremes of everything," he says."We'll get half a season's worth of snow in three days and then have two months without any snow."Shrinking seasonsA similar scenario happened this winter.
Related article: An astronaut's view on protecting the EarthLess snow drives further global warming, explains Anne Nolin, a snow hydrologist from the University of Nevada and member of Protect Our Winter's science alliance. Because snow is white it reflects most of the sunlight that hits it, but if it melts and exposes the ground beneath, that darker surface absorbs solar energy.
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