Time Mag: ‘How Climate Change Is Affecting the NFL’ – ‘Players are at risk of heat exhaustion…organ damage, heart failure, & death’
https://time.com/7213399/how-climate-change-is-affecting-the-nfl/
By Jeffrey Kluger
Excerpt: …Athletic exertion in extreme heat can be dangerous—even deadly. Players are at risk of heat exhaustion, characterized by symptoms including faintness, dizziness, fatigue, weak or rapid pulse, and low blood pressure; and heat stroke, with symptoms including high core body temperature, change in mental or emotional state, racing heart rate, rapid breathing, nausea, and headache. In extreme cases, excessive heat can lead to organ damage, heart failure, and death.
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There is no escaping the fact that the world is steadily—and dangerously—heating up. This year was the first to see the planet register average temperatures 1.5°C (2.7°F) higher than pre-industrial levels, the benchmark established by the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, which seeks to limit future warming to well below 2°C in the 21st century, with a preferred target no higher than 1.5°C. The NFL might seem like an afterthought in an existential crisis like climate change, but the league is, all the same, feeling the pain.
In a new survey conducted by the research and communications group Climate Central, analysts used open source data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to track the temperature trends in all 30 NFL cities during football’s September to December regular season, from 1970 to 2024. The result: over that time, temperatures have risen in every one of those cities by an average of 2.8°F. Las Vegas and Minneapolis warmed the most (5.1°F and 5°F respectively), and Los Angeles warmed the least at 0.4°F. Every city but L.A. experienced at least 1°F of warming. Those cities are, of course, getting especially hot in the summer, often subjecting players to dangerous conditions not only during training camp, which begins in July, but into the first month of the season too.
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All of this is just one more red flag that Earth’s climate is heading into new and perilous territory. “It’s definitely at a point at which you say, ‘OK, we’re getting to dangerous levels here,’” says Brady. “We’ve seen it with the hurricanes that have been so large and disastrous and with wildfires and high temperatures. It’s not a tipping point yet, but it’s a warning.”