Dry Beijing barely gets any winter precipitation, making this year’s Winter Games the first to rely almost entirely on artificial snow. Organizers are touting the event’s green credentials, but experts do worry about the environmental impact of such a massive snowmaking operation given the huge amounts of water and electricity it takes.
Snowmaking equipment tries to duplicate this process, artificially, by spraying atomized water into the air along with mechanically created nucleators -- tiny ice crystals — that act as seeds for the manufactured snowflakes. This process has been around for decades: simulated snow was first used at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York.TechnoAlpin won the bid to supply the Beijing games with snowmaking equipment, a contract worth $22 million.
TechnoAlpin's fan guns resemble small jet engines or oversized hair dryers, with nozzles spraying either atomized water or ice crystals mounted around the edge of a turbine. The guns, which can be aimed remotely using Bluetooth, blast the mixture dozens of meters into the air to cover broad downhill slopes.
“And while it’s falling to the ground, snow is created,” said Michael Mayr, TechnoAlpin's China sales manager. The International Olympic Committee even noted the issue in its own 2015 evaluation of Beijing’s bid, saying the two districts “have minimal annual snowfall” and that the Winter Games would have to rely completely on fake snow.The “Beijing – Zhangjiakou area is becoming increasingly arid” because of climate change and other factors, the IOC said, adding that Beijing's bid “underestimated the amount of water" needed for snowmaking.
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