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If you like home runs, you’ll love climate change. As the temperature rises, air resistance goes down. Researchers at Dartmouth College have calculated that human-caused warming led to 58 extra home runs each Major League Baseball season for the last decade, and predict hundreds more as warming continues.
If only the rest of the story was so benign. Melting ski slopes, scorching temperatures, and smoke-filled skies threaten some of the world’s favorite pastimes and the athletes who participate in them, from grassroots to the professionals.
The Lascaux caves in France, painted 15,000 years ago, appear to show sprinting and wrestling matches. Physical games and competition it seems are foundational to the human experience—whether in the Stone Age or the Anthropocene. But like so many other endeavors, sports will confront the specter of a climate-changed future, in part by letting go of long-cherished traditions and in part by reinventing itself.
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The First Half Is Over
1. A lost month of winter. Winter in the US has shrunk about four weeks over the last century, with the date of the first and last frosts getting closer by a couple of days each decade. And what winter there is, is wetter than ever. Since 1949, nearly 80% of weather stations across North America have recorded an increase in winter precipitation falling as rain instead of snow, according to the National Environmental Education Foundation. That’s squeezing ski resorts, which typically need 100 days of open snow days to break even. Research from the University of Waterloo estimates that only one of the 21 cities that hosted the Winter Olympics in the past 100 years will have a climate suitable for skiing and snowboarding by the end of the century.
2. Indoor summers. Outdoor sports have gotten dangerous. The women’s marathon at the 2019 World Athletics Championship in Qatar started at 11.59pm to avoid the worst of the heat. Even so, over 40% of starters failed to finish the course. During the Tour de France, traditionally held in July, organizers faced with cyclists suffering heatstroke spray roads with water to reduce temperatures—hardly an option for recreational riders. And some hazards no money can protect from. At least one player in the 2020 Australian Open tennis championship retired after breathing wildfire smoke.
3. Seasonal athletic disorder. As summers turn hostile, the biggest impacts will fall on the youngest and poorest players playing grassports sports. MIT researchers have calculated that south and southeast US states will lose about 20% of their tolerable outdoor days by 2100, and there will be similar decreases in the Global South. California has already changed its rules for when young athletes can play and practice in high temperatures. As the heat rises, players must be given extra water breaks, shed protective gear, and ultimately, stop practicing outdoors altogether. Some coaches are even suggesting shifting the entire football season to avoid the most intense temperatures.
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How the Second Half Might Play Out
1. Return to lockdown schedules. Sports leagues in the US could slash carbon emissions associated with air travel by more than one-fifth by returning to pandemic-era schedules, according to research out of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, professional leagues canceled overseas games, scheduled multiple games in a row, and increased local and regional match-ups. The move helped keep players safe, but the drop in air travel also significantly reduced their emissions. Some athletes are now changing their own travel habits: champion Swedish skier Björn Sandström drives long distances to his training sessions in an electric car rather than flying. “I wanted to show that it is possible to conduct elite sports in a different way,” he told Cool Down, a sport for climate action network.
2. Choosing racquets over irons. Sport doesn’t just suffer from climate change, it contributes to it, too. The 2022 FIFA soccer World Cup had a carbon footprint of over 3.6 million tons of CO2. Over half that total was due to jet travel by spectators, players and officials. At a grassroots level, which sports you participate in can make a big difference to your emissions. Soccer has one of the lowest carbon footprints in sport, along with gym sessions and tennis, according to a comprehensive 2018 study from Germany. Playing golf, diving, and surfing generate over six times the emissions as the lowest sports—again, mostly due to the travel involved.
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