Today’s football game in Athens is being played in temperatures far above normal, although they are not quite as close to record-setting highs as we experienced earlier this week. In fact, in much of the Southeast temperatures the last two weeks have been more like July or August than mid-October, although that should change tomorrow when a strong cold front moves south through the region.
Since the 1960’s, temperatures in the Southeast have been increasing across the region. This is true of both average temperatures and maximum and minimum temperatures. (You can try this out for yourself at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag.) While there may be a small warming contribution from urban areas, most of the stations in the database are rural, not urban, stations and don’t show any effects of urban heat islands. The percent of the Southeast covered by much above normal temperatures in 2016 was 80 percent of the area, and this has also been generally increasing across the region, although of course there are year-to-year variations depending on how the large-scale weather pattern sets up in a given year.
How will this affect temperatures at SEC football games? The warming may benefit later fall games, since temperatures could be more mild than they were in the 1960’s and other cool decades. But higher heat in August and September could make it much harder on players as well as fans sitting in the shadeless and windless stadiums. Teams might respond by playing more night games when temperatures are marginally cooler, although of course television schedules will continue to drive when teams play.
Saturday Down South published a very interesting analysis of climate conditions for SEC teams compared to the other Power Five conferences. It discusses the effects of extreme heat on players getting ready for the season in August and how it affects spectators as well. Rules about when players can practice with full pads have already become more restrictive in high heat and humidity conditions compared to previous decades as our understanding of how the human body responds to those extreme conditions improves. Even so, players die far too often from practicing in extreme conditions and suffering from heat stroke. You can read it at https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/sec-football/weather-hot-temps/.
