By Randy Boswell
A team of Canadian climate scientists is predicting the widespread disappearance of outdoor hockey rinks across the country in the next 50 years due to global warming — with some regions of the sport’s spiritual birthplace likely to witness an even earlier eclipse of old-time shinny on natural ice.
“The ability to skate and play hockey outdoors is a critical component of Canadian identity and culture,” three researchers from Montreal’s McGill and Concordia universities write in the latest issue of the U.K.-based scholarly journal Environmental Research Letters.
“Wayne Gretzky learned to skate on a backyard skating rink; our results imply that such opportunities may not be available to future generations of Canadian children.”
The scientists — Nikolay Damyanov and Lawrence Mysak of McGill and Concordia’s Damon Matthews — tracked historical temperature trends recorded since 1951 at 142 meteorological stations in every corner of the country.
They also interviewed outdoor icemakers in Quebec and Ontario to find out about what temperatures are required to start up an open-air rink and keep it usable for the duration of the skating season.
The researchers learned that, in general, it takes three consecutive days with a maximum temperature of -5 C to make ice and begin the outdoor skating season.
The length of the season is more difficult to pin down, since a rink’s annual life span depends on the local flooding and maintenance regime as well as weather conditions. But the researchers set the same minus-5 C standard to tally the approximate number of days when outdoor rinks should have been available for skaters and hockey players.
“Many individual locations have seen a statistically significant decrease in the number of viable ice-flooding days, suggesting a significant shortening of the length of the outdoor skating season over much of the country between 1951 and 2005,” the published paper states, identifying B.C., southern Alberta and the Prairies as the areas with the sharpest drop in the number of game days.
The historical warming effect was noticeable but not as significant in Ontario and Quebec, while research sites in Atlantic Canada showed, overall, no significant change in the durability of outdoor rinks over the past half-century.
Although the researchers did not make detailed calculations projecting the temperature trends into the future, they observed that continued winter warming — as predicted for Canada in standard climate-change models — will result in fewer and fewer viable locations for outdoor rinks in Canada and shorter and shorter seasons in most places where skating persists.
Referring to southern B.C. and Alberta in particular, the researchers stated: “In the most extreme case of the Southwest Canada region, a simple linear extrapolation of the OSS (outdoor skating season) length trend from the last 30 years of our record into the future shows that the number of viable rink-flooding days could reach zero by mid-century.”
Matthews told Postmedia News that the research team knows of no other study assessing the state of outdoor rinks in Canada or elsewhere around the world.
But it was “an obvious thing” to examine, he said, because “hockey culture in Canada is almost like nothing else. For a significant fraction of people in the country it’s their only exercise and the centre point of winter culture.”
The study’s conclusions echo concerns expressed anecdotally in recent years by many outdoor icemakers. Meanwhile, a number of municipalities across Canada have been investing in refrigerated outdoor skating facilities that remain open in warmer weather.
Although the researchers did not assess the viability trends for ponds, rivers and other water bodies as skating surfaces, they noted in a summary of their study that the Rideau Canal experienced one of its shortest skating seasons ever this winter.
Organizers of Ottawa-Gatineau’s annual Winterlude festival, highlighted by activities along the canal’s famous skateway, also made a point this year of expanding the number and range of events held at other venues because of concerns about milder temperatures in recent years.
Matthews said he and his fellow researchers “knew this would be an issue that would resonate with Canadians,” and called it a “fortuitous coincidence” that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a well-known “hockey enthusiast.”
Matthews expressed hope that the grim outlook for outdoor hockey rinks might “push the Conservative government to take action” to curb Canada’s contribution to global carbon dioxide emissions, widely seen by scientists as a key driver of climate change.
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