Climate Change Impacts on Heat Stress Risk at the Summer Olympics

Last updated: February 20, 2026

Rising global temperatures are increasing the risk of heat stress during outdoor physical activity. How this will affect the safe limits of human performance in high-intensity athletic settings, and thus the economics and logistics of professional sporting events, is an outstanding question. As the Summer Olympics involves sustained outdoor exertion across a wide range of sports, understanding where and when this event can be safely held provides a useful test case for evaluating the impact of climate change on outdoor exercise and the feasibility of professional athletic competitions in a warming world. 

We applied a sport-specific biophysical heat stress model combined with high-resolution climate data for historical (1983-2016) and projected (2050) conditions to assess how climate change is amplifying heat-related health risks for Summer Olympics athletes. We find that the frequency of extreme heat stress risk conditions will substantially increase. Future viable host cities will increasingly be limited to higher latitudes, higher elevations, or cooler seasonal climates, highlighting how warming temperatures are beginning to constrain the geographic and climatic envelope within which elite outdoor athletic performance can safely occur.

RELATED PUBLICATIONS:

• Raeber, M, Meegan-Kumar, D., Jay, O., Davis, S., Baldwin, J.W. Increasing risk of heat stress at the Summer Olympics. In review at Nature Cities. Pre-print: doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7313457/v1