At the rate we’re going, this is going to be something you can tell your grandchildren about: The day when it was possibly to play hockey outdoors, including on the ponds.
Time.com says researchers are finding the “outdoor-skating season” is continuing to narrow:
Researchers from McGill University and Concordia University in Canada studied historical weather data in the country going back to the 1950s. Using that information they calculated the beginning and end of what they called the outdoor-skating season (OSS) each year — the months when the temperature was consistently cold enough to support outdoor ice hockey.
Of the 142 weather stations they surveyed, the vast majority reported temperature data that meant the OSS was getting steadily shorter, with warmer winters and less time for outdoor hockey. They found that the biggest decrease in the skating season was occurring in the prairies and southwestern Canada. Extrapolating into the future, they estimated that outdoor hockey soon go extinct in warmer parts of the country like British Columbia and southern Alberta.
Their study was published today in the Institute of Physics journal Environmental Research Letters. Here’s the complete paper.