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Major League Baseball And Climate Change | Earth Wise

May 16, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Major League Baseball is one of the most historic professional sports leagues in the United States and represents the highest level of professional baseball. Throughout its history, MLB has endured many changes to rules, equipment, and strategy. As a result of these changes, the league has been segmented into several distinct eras, including the dead ball era and the live ball era.

According to a new study by researchers from Dartmouth College, baseball could be on the cusp of another era where higher temperatures due to global warming are increasingly having an impact on the game. The report, which was published in the scientific journal Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, found that more than 500 home runs since 2010 can be attributed to the warmer and thinner air caused by global warming The research team expects several hundred more home runs per season to come with future climate warming.

While only 1% of recent home runs are attributable to climate change, researchers expect that figure to jump to 10% or more by 2100 if climate change continues unabated.

The researchers examined each major league ballpark to gauge how the average number of home runs per year could rise with each 1-degree Celsius increase in global average temperature. They found that Wrigley Field – home of the Chicago Cubs – would have the largest spike with more than 15 home runs per season. Meanwhile, domed Tropicana Field – home of the Tampa Bay Rays – would remain unaffected by the hotter temperatures outside.

Perhaps the next era for baseball will be known as “climate-ball.”

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Spike in Major League Home Runs Tied to Climate Change

Photo, posted September 23, 2021, courtesy of Joe Passe via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Accelerating Global Glacier Loss | Earth Wise

June 10, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Glaciers represent the snows of centuries compressed over time to form flowing rivers of ice. Glaciers always change, accumulating snow in the winter and losing ice to melting in the summer. But in recent times, the melting has been outpacing the accumulation.

Glaciers are a sensitive indicator of climate change. They have been melting at a high rate since the mid-20th century – regardless of altitude or latitude. But up until recently, the full extent of glacial ice loss has only been partially measured and understood.

Now, according to new research led by scientists from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and the University of Toulouse in France, nearly all the world’s glaciers are becoming thinner and losing mass. And the changes are accelerating. The study, which is the most comprehensive and accurate of its kind to date, is the first to include all the world’s glaciers – around 220,000 in total – excluding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The research team’s findings were recently published in the journal Nature.

Between 2000 and 2019, the world’s glaciers lost an average of more than 294 billion tons of ice per year. Between 2000 and 2004, glaciers lost an average of about 250 billion tons of ice each year. But between 2015 and 2019, ice mass loss jumped up to an average of approximately 328 billion tons annually.

Glacial melt is responsible for 21% of the observed sea level rise during this two decade time period studied.

This research is just another reminder of how we need to act urgently if we want to prevent the worst-case climate change scenario from becoming a reality.

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Global glacier retreat has accelerated

Photo, posted September 17, 2015, courtesy of Richard Whitaker via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.