Feb. 12, 2026, TORONTO 鈥� While security at major international sporting events is always intensive, recent Olympics and other major sporting events have devoted well over a billion dollars to security alone, making it one of the largest and fastest鈥慻rowing costs of hosting. 

91亚色 Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health, School of Kinesiology & Health Science says recent fatal shootings by ICE and Border Patrol officers in the U.S., and their involvement in the  2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games through U.S. Homeland Security Investigations have understandably heightened public concern about the agency鈥檚 conduct.

鈥淲hen security partnerships expand without accountability, the people most likely to be harmed are low鈥慽ncome, racialized, and migrant women and children, the very groups these initiatives claim to protect,鈥� says De Lisio, who explores this theme in her forthcoming book Play Naked. 

 De Lisio has worked with researchers in Rio de Janeiro to examine what happened with sex workers during the 2016 Olympics and is currently working with groups in Los Angeles, which is one of the hosts of this year鈥檚 FIFA Men鈥檚 World Cup, the 2027 Super Bowl, and the 2028 Olympic Games, to examine what is happening on the ground.  

De Lisio is also available for interviews in Portuguese.  

She can comment on:

• The growth of the mega-security apparatus at large sporting events聽
• Understanding how displacement brought on by mega-events affects vulnerable communities聽
• Sport mega-event construction and the financialization of housing
• Analysis of involvement of ICE in the year鈥檚 games and potential ramifications for upcoming Olympics and other large sporting events聽

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91亚色 is a modern, multi-campus, urban university located in Toronto, Ontario. Backed by a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners, we bring a uniquely global perspective to help solve societal challenges, drive positive change, and prepare our students for success. 91亚色's fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario's Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education. 91亚色鈥檚 campuses in Costa Rica and India offer students exceptional transnational learning opportunities and innovative programs. Together, we can make things right for our communities, our planet, and our future.

Media Contact: Emina Gamulin, 91亚色 Media Relations, 437-217-6362, egamulin@yorku.ca 

The post 91亚色 expert available to comment on ICE at the Olympics appeared first on News@91亚色.

Several studies have looked at lake ice quantity and its duration, but there is little research on the quality of the ice which directly corresponds to how safe it is to venture out on.

TORONTO, Sept. 19, 2024 鈥� Ice may look safe for a game of pick-up hockey on the lake, but as a new study out of 91亚色 found, looks can be deceiving. Warming winters are not only affecting ice thickness and timing 鈥� when a lake freezes and thaws 鈥� but also quality, making it potentially unstable and unsafe.

When lakes and rivers freeze, there are two predominant layers of ice, what鈥檚 called white ice and black ice. White ice is generally opaque, like snow, and filled with more air bubbles and smaller ice crystals, diminishing its strength and stability, while black ice is clear and dense with few air pockets and larger ice crystals making it a lot stronger.

鈥淚ce quality is important because of its direct implications for load bearing capacity for human safety and also how much light will transmit under ice for life under frozen lakes,鈥� says 91亚色 Professor of 91亚色's Faculty of Science.

The problem, says lead author and 91亚色 Postdoctoral Fellow Joshua Culpepper, is that the unpredictable and warmer winter weather is creating thinner layers of black ice and sometimes a corresponding thicker layer of white ice, the unstable kind. The two combined can make for treacherous conditions for skaters, hockey players, snowmobilers, ice anglers and ice truckers.

鈥淲e know that in general, lake ice is forming later in the season and breaking up earlier, which implies an overall shorter duration of ice cover, but our study looked at what the ice is doing. How is it changing? You might get periods of time when people are on the ice and they think it's safe, but it really isn't. It's not sufficiently thick enough given the changes in the quality,鈥� says Culpepper.

10 cm no longer the golden rule

Thickness alone is no longer a good predictor of safe ice. If there is too much white ice and not enough black ice, the ice it may not be strong enough to hold a person鈥檚 weight. It鈥檚 what the researchers are calling a dangerous combination.

鈥淔or a human to go out on the ice to skate or play, that requires about 10 centimeters or four inches of black ice鈥ut what we're seeing and what we're predicting is that climate change is contributing to more white ice conditions,鈥� says Sharma, who recommends people measure the ice and if there is only a thin layer of black ice to double the usual recommended thickness to at least 20 cm.

鈥淏lack ice is clear and there's no slush. You shouldn't be walking over slush,鈥� says Sharma, she adds that it鈥檚 always best to go with someone or a group.

On thin ice

The lack of consideration for quality ice is already leading to a loss of life. In Canada last December, six people, including a couple of teens in Ontario, died within a week plunging through thin ice. Two more died in Ontario this February. In Finland, four people died from falling through weak ice in January and February alone, where the average is said to be 18 people annually. In Sweden, 16 people drowned from falling through the ice in 2014 and at least nine in 2021, for example.

The findings from a 2020 study led by Sharma found widespread drowning across the Northern Hemisphere, but surprisingly, northern Canada, the territories, had the highest drownings per capita even though it was the coldest.

鈥淭hat is because of the dramatic changes in the Arctic which is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe so it's not just southern regions that are experiencing these changes in ice conditions, but also far north. What you would consider to be like extremely cold icy areas,鈥� says Sharma.

鈥淔or a transport truck, they require 100 cm or about 42 inches of black ice. So those benchmarks on transportation are no longer viable because there is more white ice, which is approximately less than half the strength of black ice. What we鈥檙e predicting is a 95 to a 99 per cent loss in winter ice road transportation infrastructure without meaningful adaptations for ice safety.鈥�

That could mean remote communities are at risk of not being cut off and unable to access food, supplies, medicine and the like, during the winter.

Unseasonable winter weather

For this study, Culpepper and some of his co-authors had to stop taking ice measurements in mid-February on Lake Simcoe and early March on Paint Lake in the Muskoka region because the ice cover was dangerously thin.

Changes in precipitation from unseasonably warm weather is creating a lot of the unsafe ice conditions and unpredictability. Warmer temperatures, rain and even snow can alter the strength and thickness of lake ice.

Sharma and Culpepper recommend checking the weather reports for the last month.

鈥淟ake ice has a memory,鈥� says Sharma. 鈥淎ll of the weather fluctuations are stored in the ice. If the temperature was over 0 C for a period of time, if there was rain or if there were extremely sunny conditions, all of that can affect the safety of the ice for human use. When there are freeze thaw events or temperatures are above 0 C, the ice becomes weaker, and it becomes structurally less stable.鈥�

Underneath the ice

The diminishing quality of ice is also affecting life below, the amount of nutrients available for fish and other aquatic life, such as invertebrates, as well as phytoplankton which needs light for photosynthesis, but with more white ice, it鈥檚 blocking some of that light and compromising the health of the ecosystem.

But as Culpepper says, their study is one of only a few that looks at the quality of lake ice and yet that ice is changing dramatically. 鈥淭he thing that stuck out to me first is the surprising lack of data that we have on ice quality broadly,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e were diving into what data was available, but trying to find exactly what we could work with in terms of data that's available in the Northern Hemisphere was pretty challenging.鈥�

What鈥檚 needed, he says, is regular measurements of ice quality, including black and white ice thickness, throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

The paper, , was published today in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment.

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91亚色 is a modern, multi-campus, urban university located in Toronto, Ontario. Backed by a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners, we bring a uniquely global perspective to help solve societal challenges, drive positive change and prepare our students for success. 91亚色's fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario's Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education. 91亚色鈥檚 campuses in Costa Rica and India offer students exceptional transnational learning opportunities and innovative programs. Together, we can make things right for our communities, our planet, and our future.

Media Contact:

Sandra McLean, 91亚色 Media Relations, 416-272-6317, sandramc@yorku.ca

The post Lake ice quality degrading as planet warms 鈥� skaters, hockey players, ice truckers on thin ice appeared first on News@91亚色.

TORONTO, April 26, 2016 鈥� In 1442, Shinto priests in Japan began keeping records of the freeze dates of a nearby lake, while in 1693 Finnish merchants started recording breakup dates on a local river. Together they create the oldest inland water ice records in human history and mark the first inklings of climate change, says a new out of 91亚色 and the University of Wisconsin.

The researchers say the meticulous recordkeeping of these historical 鈥渃itizen scientists鈥� reveals increasing trends towards later ice-cover formation and earlier spring thaw since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

, a 91亚色 biologist, and John J. Magnuson, a University of Wisconsin limnologist, co-led an international team of scientists from Canada, United States, Finland, and Japan looking at this early data. Their findings are published in .

鈥淭hese data are unique,鈥� says Sharma. 鈥淭hey were collected by humans viewing and recording the ice event year after year for centuries, well before climate change was even a topic of discussion.鈥�

Torne River, spring 2003 in Tornio. Photo by Terhi Korhonen

The records from Lake Suwa in the Japanese Alps, says Sharma, were collected by Shinto priests observing a legend about a male god who crossed the frozen lake to visit a female god at her shrine. A local Finnish merchant initiated data collection on Finland鈥檚 Torne River because the river, and its frozen-or-thawed status, was important to trade, transportation, and food acquisition.

Lake Suwi's Omiwatari, when the ice heaves in a line across the lake

Ice seasonality, or when a lake or river freezes over in winter or thaws again in spring, are a variable strongly related to climate, says Magnuson. And while such a long-term, human-collected dataset is remarkable in and of itself, the climate trends they reveal are equally notable. 鈥淓ven though the two waters are half a world apart and differ greatly from one another,鈥� he says, 鈥渢he general patterns of ice seasonality are similar for both systems.鈥�

For example, the study found that, from 1443 to 1683, Lake Suwa鈥檚 annual freeze date was moving almost imperceptibly to later in the year 鈥� at a rate of 0.19 days per decade. From the start of the Industrial Revolution, however, that trend in a later freeze date grew 24 times faster, pushing the lake鈥檚 鈥渋ce on鈥� date back 4.6 days per decade. On the Torne River, there was a corresponding trend for earlier ice break-up in the spring, as the speed with which the river moved toward earlier thaw dates doubled. These findings strongly indicate more rapid climate change during the last two centuries, the researchers report.

In recent years, says Magnuson, both waters have also exhibited more extreme ice dates corresponding with increased warming. For Lake Suwa, that means more years without full ice cover even occurring. Before the Industrial Revolution, Lake Suwa froze over 99 per cent of the time. More recently, it does so only half the time. A similar trend is seen with extremely early ice breakup on Torne River. Extreme cases once occurred in early May or later 95 per cent of the time, but they are now primarily in late April and early May.

Postcard from 1906 taken in Happaranda

鈥淥ur findings not only bolster what scientists have been saying for decades, but they also bring to the forefront the implications of reduced ice cover,鈥� says Sharma. The consequences of less ice span ecology, culture and economy. 鈥淒ecreasing ice cover erodes the 鈥榮ense of place鈥� that winter provides to many cultures, with potential loss of winter activities such as ice fishing, skiing, and transportation.鈥� Less ice and warmer waters also lead to more algal blooms and impaired water quality, she says.

The Priest Mr. Kiyoshi Miyasaki pointing out some of the records on lake ice and the omiwatari. His data sheet summarizing the records are on the table. Photo taken Nov 3, 2005 by JJMagnuson.

The team of researchers say they are planning follow-up studies to better understand the ecological consequences of the big changes in these two water bodies.

*Photos are also available:

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