Number of games watched by baseball players, coaches, and spectators over the years home run He’s on the rise in big competitions (when the kicker hits the ball far enough to cover all the bases and complete a run). In recent Major League seasons, home run has grown violently, which has sparked a debate among sports analysts that raises different doubts about the phenomenon: from changes in the structure of the pitches to changes in the performance of the ball or players.

However, several scientific studies suggest an even more surprising reason: rising temperatures due to climate change.

Study. Darthmoud University research, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, set out to test all of these assumptions. To do this, they observed matchday temperatures as well as analyzed data from over 100,000 official competition games and over 200,000 batting balls.

Like? They used data from high-speed cameras that have been on ballparks since 2015, providing information such as the launch angle and launch velocity of each hit. This means they can compare a ball coming out of a stick on a hot day and a cold day with the same angle and speed.

Hot hitting vs cold hitting. According to the laws of physics, hot air is less dense than cold air. As the air warms and the molecules move faster, the air expands, leaving more space between the molecules. Therefore, due to less air resistance, a batting ball must be thrown farther on a hotter day than on a colder day.

Some scientists, such as Alan Nathan, are determined to show the link between climate change and global warming. home run, that the balls go further at higher temperatures, but no official research has been done about it. Until now.

Results. Thanks to the experiment at Darthmoud, they concluded that a game played on a day 10ºC hotter than average is almost 20% more. home run. In fact, they found that there are more than 500 home run Since 2010, it may be directly related to the reduction in air density caused by human-induced global warming.

The authors also determined that a 1°C increase in maximum temperature on the day of a baseball game (in an open stadium) increases the amount of heat. home run 1.96% Even more in afternoon games: 2.4%. Therefore, every degree caused by climate change is associated with approximately 95 degrees. home run more per baseball season. Which indicates it will cause 192. home run More per year by 2050 and 467 more by 2100.

Because? The relationship between heat, lower air density, and the trajectory of a baseball is clear, as Jana Houser, professor of meteorology at Ohio State University, explains in this Bloomberg article: “Higher temperatures are associated with warmer, lower density air. Therefore, Because a flying object has to pass through fewer air molecules, it will encounter less molecular resistance in the air than at cooler temperatures.”

Answers. Although there are still other factors that more or less explain home run like the architecture of the ball in baseball, doping Among athletes, a change in training or height differences between stadiums represent a drastic change in temperature.

To avoid this, some experts have suggested changing match times to be played at night (like most football matches in Europe) or building domes over stadiums. In Denver, where the air is less dense due to the high altitude, the Rockies team began storing play balls in a humidification system in 2002 to make them “softer.”

Picture: Daiji Umemoto (Open splash)

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