At the Winter Olympics, athletes race down immaculate white slopes. The snow looks perfect. But it is largely manufactured.

In Italy, where rising temperatures and declining snowfall were felt earlier than in other Alpine regions, technological fixes began in the 1990s. Today, reliance on artificial snow is widespread: around 95% of Italian ski resorts use snowmaking, and more than 70% of slopes are covered by artificial snow during the season.

Modern snowmaking uses a large fan-like “snow canon” to spray tiny droplets of water into cold air, where they freeze before landing on the ground. Vehicles known as piste bashers (in Europe) or snowcats (in North America) then compress and groom that new snow until it forms a more stable base. The process does not rely on chemical additives. It has become so effective that it can now guarantee competition-grade conditions even when natural snowfall is increasingly unreliable.

Together with colleagues at the Universities of Oxford and Trento, I have been part of the Hot Snow project, investigating what all this means for the ski industry.

We know that continuous innovation – often referred to by the industry as “technical snow” – has helped protect winter sports. Yet we found it also carries a less visible risk: successful adaptation through artificial snow can make the ski industry complacent about climate change.

In leading resorts, artificial snowmaking process is data-driven and highly automated. At the touch of a tablet, operators can adjust the quality and density of new snow, depending on temperature, humidity and the sort of surface they want to create. This produces snow that can be more controllable and durable than natural snowfall.........

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