CNN:
Study claims possible end to Canada’s outdoor pastime
A Canadian icon could face extinction in the coming decades, researchers say.
A study by scientists at McGill and Concordia universities says rising temperatures are reducing the availability of frozen ponds, which eventually could mean the end of outdoor hockey.
The headlines are dire:
“Global warming could spell the end of Canada’s outdoor hockey rink,” reads one from the National Post.
“Thin ice: Canada’s outdoor rinks face meltdown,” reports The (Montreal) Gazette.
“Climate change melting backyard hockey rinks,” The Record in Waterloo, Ontario, says.
“Outdoor ice hockey could perish in some areas,” reads The Spectator in Hamilton, Ontario.
“Outdoor skating rinks threatened by climate change,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reports.
The men behind the science are Lawrence A. Mysak and Nikolay Damyanov of McGill University and H. Damon Matthews of Concordia University.
They looked at data from 142 meteorological reporting stations across Canada from 1951 to 2005 and came to this conclusion: “We would expect all regions of Canada to see a decreased viability of outdoor skating under continued winter climate warming.”
And in the case of southwest Canada, the number of days where outdoor ponds are viable for skating, and, in turn, hockey, could be zero by the middle of the century, the scientists report in a paper published this week in the Institute of Physics journal Environmental Research Letters.
“It’s hard to imagine a Canada without outdoor hockey, but I really worry that this will be a casualty of our continuing to ignore the climate problem and to obstruct international efforts to decrease greenhouse gas emissions,” Matthews said in a statement.
The rest here.