Higher temperatures and thinner air caused by ClimateChange make it easier for power hitters to hit homers.
Climate change will affect essentially every aspect of our lives, climate researchers say, even America’s unofficial pastime, baseball. Because warmer air is less dense and exerts less drag on a batted ball, the number of home runs should in theory climb as global temperatures increase. And, sure enough, a new study shows that about 0.8% of the homers hit in Major League Baseball since 2010 made it over the fence thanks to the extra distance global warming lent their flight.
The idea that climate change could affect baseball isn’t new. During a game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers in 2012, former big-league catcher and broadcast commentator Tim McCarverin home run rates across the sport. At the time, many fans and some scientists were dismissive. However, the idea resonated with Christopher Callahan, a climate scientist and baseball fan at Dartmouth College.
The researchers tracked game-day temperatures and homers from 100,000 MLB games between 1962 and 2019 at stadiums at various elevations across the country. To control for the launch angle and speed of each batted ball–and thus the skill of both pitchers and batters in varying temperature conditions –they combed through high-speed Statcast camera footage of 220,000 individual hits between 2015 and 2019.
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