Observed decreases in the Canadian outdoor skating season due to recent winter warming

Abstract

Global warming has the potential to negatively affect one of Canada's primary sources of winter recreation: hockey and ice skating on outdoor rinks. Observed changes in winter temperatures in Canada suggest changes in the meteorological conditions required to support the creation and maintenance of outdoor skating rinks; while there have been observed increases in the ice-free period of several natural water bodies, there has been no study of potential trends in the duration of the season supporting the construction of outdoor skating rinks. Here we show that the outdoor skating season (OSS) in Canada has significantly shortened in many regions of the country as a result of changing climate conditions. We first established a meteorological criterion for the beginning, and a proxy for the length of the OSS. We extracted this information from daily maximum temperature observations from 1951 to 2005, and tested it for significant changes over time due to global warming as well as due to changes in patterns of large-scale natural climate variability. We found that many locations have seen a statistically significant decrease in the OSS length, particularly in Southwest and Central Canada. This suggests that future global warming has the potential to significantly compromise the viability of outdoor skating in Canada.

Winters too warm to skate? Citizen‐science reported variability in availability of outdoor skating in Canada

“…Although the temporal coverage of our data is limited to two skating seasons, the spatial coverage is significant and provides evidence that the severity of the adverse effects of warming temperatures on skating rinks, and the timing of these impacts, will vary across locations. The regional patterns of variance found in our results are consistent with those reported by Damyanov et al () which observed that skating season lengths and start dates have been most affected in the Prairies and Southwest parts of Canada.…”

Historical Trends, Drivers, and Future Projections of Ice Phenology in Small North Temperate Lakes in the Laurentian Great Lakes Region

“…More frequent algal blooms and the loss of large-bodied cold-water fishes will negatively impact important ecosystem services such as clean drinking water, fisheries, and summer recreational activities. In addition, lake ice supports multi-billion-dollar recreation and tourism opportunities in north temperate regions including ice fishing, snowmobiling, ice skating, and associated winter festivals [63,[68][69][70]. Northern transportation is predicted to be heavily impacted by climate, as ice roads spanning frozen waterways are relied upon as lifelines to remote northern communities and industrial sites [71].…”

A Systems Perspective on Volunteered Geographic Information

“…Aided by the Geoweb, rink enthusiasts make routine observations regarding the "skatability" of their rinks, which in turn, builds a detailed database about environmental conditions and their change over time. The project is helping researchers study the micro-level impacts of climate change [25]. The growing number of citizen science projects is filling in information gaps between the public, scientists, and decision-makers, by drawing on a range of trained and ad-hoc observers [26].…”

“…With projects aimed at collecting active contributions, the participants are often drawn from an engaged group of stakeholders such as a purposely selected community group, a pre-selected segment of the population, a set of authorized and trusted contributors, or unknown contributors motivated via a media or outreach campaign. In the case of RinkWatch, initiators identify those who maintain backyard ice rinks as their primary participants, while OpenStreetMap relies on a broad range of participants to contribute information on their local community [12,25]. In all cases of VGI systems aimed at collecting active content, the participant "is expected to consciously contribute to the observation or the analysis" [21].…”