Golf, cricket face brunt of climate change
Golf, cricket and football are suffering from wetter weather linked to climate change in Britain, a study said on Wednesday. More downpours meant pitches and fairways were more likely to be soggy or unplayable while sea level rise was also aggravating erosion of coastal golf courses in Scotland.
The Climate Coalition, said its report underscored that warming threatens sports beyond those dependent on snow and ice on display at this month’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
A main problem is that six of the seven wettest years on record in Britain have been since 2000, said Piers Forster, a professor of climate change at the University of Leeds.
“Britain is particularly susceptible to storms coming in from the North Atlantic,” he said.
Steve Isaac, director of golf course management at the R&A, the governing body for golf outside the United States and Mexico, said in the report that he reckoned golf was “more impacted by climate change than any sport aside from skiing”.
Coastal golf courses were suffering from storm surges and a rise in sea levels, caused by a melt of ice from Greenland to the Himalayas.
The England and Wales Cricket Board said it was suffering from less predictable weather. Twenty seven percent of England’s home One Day Internationals were played with reduced overs since 2000 due to rain disruptions, the study said.
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