Ever since I took my first turns on a snowy golf course on Cape Cod, my life has revolved and evolved around snow. As a professional snowboarder, I’ve ridden the steepest mountains in the world and spent weeks outside on foot-powered expeditions. Today I live in Truckee, a mountain town tucked into California’s Sierra Nevada, where I share my love of mountains with my wife and children. When we watch the Olympics, it still makes me joyous, but these days I also feel a little wistful.

As the world celebrates the achievements of athletes gliding over, down and across snow, I’ve been reflecting on what I see in the mountains and for the future of these very Games. And for good reason. A team of researchers led by scientists at the University of Waterloo has found that if global emissions of greenhouse gases are not significantly reduced, only eight of the 21 cities that have hosted the Winter Olympics will be cold enough to reliably do so again by the end of this century.

Closer to home, the snowpack in the Sierra is at just 14 percent of the historical average. I never imagined I would see this in the middle of February.

But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The past three years were the hottest ever measured since record-keeping began in 1880, with 2016 ranking No. 1, followed by 2015 and 2017, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.