Climate Change's Latest Victim: Ice Hockey

You’ve no doubt heard about the myriad effects of rising global temperatures: droughts, drying rivers,lowland floods, plummeting populations of polar bears and Emperor penguins, coastal storms putting Arctic villages in mortal danger. Now there’s a new victim: the future of Canadian ice hockey.To those of us who don’t follow sports, it might seem like a silly thing to fret over. But ice hockey is actually quite important to the culture and economy of Canada. The first organized game of indoor hockey, in 1875, took place in Montreal. When the country sent its first astronaut into space, he took a hockey stick and puck with him. Every year, according to one report, more than one-fifth of the country’s adult population attends or plays in an ice hockey game.Because a lot of this hockey fun takes place in outdoor ice rinks, the scientists behind the new study wondered if the sport has been influenced by the changing climate. Since 1950, average winter temperatures in Canada have gone up 2.5 degrees Celsius, while the duration and intensity of cold spells have decreased.Read more at...Smithsonian's Surprising Science, March 2012.