Not many good things come to mind when thinking about the effects of climate change.
Forest fires, floods, melting polar caps, heat waves, bleaching of ocean reefs.
But then there's baseball and a possible silver lining.
Has global warming turned Dodger Stadium into a home run launching pad?
I was watching ESPN's Monday night broadcast of the Los Angeles-Tampa Bay game when the play-by-play announcer said it was once an article of faith that fly balls didn't go very far in the heavy Chavez Ravine night air.
However, the announcer continued, a Dodgers executive had told him that in recent years, “generally, the marine layer has disappeared and the ball has started to be transported at night, and now you can see it in the numbers. It's a great park for home run hitters.”
This is statistically true. Between 2020 and 2025, Dodger Stadium had more home runs than any other park in Major League Baseball, although this year's total is behind last year's pace. Across Major League Baseball, home run totals have fluctuated but gradually increased over the years, and this year's pace was slightly higher than last year.
Not all of that can be attributed to climate change, as retired Dodgers great Steve Garvey will explain in a minute. When considered city by city and decade by decade, there are many factors in home run totals, from stadium dimensions to playing strategies to the number of long-ball hitters in each lineup.
But with Dodger Stadium, the marine layer angle caught my attention because I'm always looking for relatable ways to tell the story of climate change. In the past, I have written about the gradual disappearance of Joshua trees, the effect of decreasing fog and increasing heat on California's wine industry, the growing annoyance of insect bites in backyards, and the gradual migration of juvenile great white sharks toward the coast.
And now we have to ask: is global warming producing more home runs than steroids?
The warming is real, but it is not new. In Game 2 of the 2017 World Series, the temperature at Dodger Stadium surpassed 100 degrees when the first pitch was thrown and the stadium was like a popcorn machine. The Dodgers and Astros combined for a record eight home runs, and the Times story cited a NASA climate scientist who noted that the marine layer didn't show up.
While watching Monday night's game, I emailed Dodger fan Edgar McGregor, the meteorologist who warned neighbors about the catastrophic weather conditions that resulted in the Eaton Fire. I asked him what he thought about this theory of a link between decreased sea cover and the number of home runs.
“There's absolute truth to that,” McGregor said, explaining that “when ocean temperatures are warmer, the marine layer is weaker.”
McGregor analyzed aerodynamics: “Cold air is dense, so a baseball has to push aside more atoms as it travels deeper. Hot air has lower density, so baseballs travel farther.”
UC climate scientist Daniel Swain said this pattern will accelerate “for the rest of our lives as the air continues to warm and baseballs continue to encounter less and less resistance.”
This doesn't mean an infield fly ball will become a home run, but Swain said balls travel four inches further for every 1 degree Fahrenheit increase, “which means the average hit goes 1 to 2 feet farther than it would have been in the early 20th century.”
That doesn't sound like a staggering difference, but with thousands of batted balls over the years, many outs turn into doubles, triples and home runs. Swain sent me a 2023 study from the journal of the American Meteorological Society titled “Global Warming, Home Runs, and the Future of the American Pastime.”
The researchers reviewed data between 2010 and 2019 and found that “higher temperatures substantially increase home runs,” and about 50 per year “are attributable to historical warming.” That adds up to about 500 more home runs.
The scientists concluded: “Each degree of global warming is associated with 95 additional home runs per baseball season.”
Home runs bring fans to their feet, like in Monday night's game, when Kyle Tucker hit one that went just over the right field wall and Miguel Rojas scored the game-winner with a shot that barely cleared the left field fence. So I don't want to sound like a killjoy, but there is no bigger story in the world than the accelerated destruction of the only lot we have.
If the right team hits a home run, feel free to go ahead and cheer. But if the wrong team hits, you can remind your friends and loved ones that every home run is like a fossil fuel bugle call signaling the end of the world as we know it.
Fortunately, the marine layer has not yet completely disappeared. We still have some gray in May this year and also some gloom in June. I wondered, however, if there were any retired Dodgers who might be thinking that they would have hit more home runs if they had the advantage of warmer air.
“I remember some balls just didn't travel very far, especially compared to day games,” said James Loney, who played first base for the Dodgers from 2006 to 2012 and had 106 career home runs with three teams.
Today's Dodgers hit a lot of home runs mainly because the lineup is loaded, Loney said. But he said he remembered players on visiting teams hitting a long ball and passing it to first base, thinking “they had a home run and then they turned right back to the dugout.”
Garvey, also a first baseman, hit 272 home runs in his 18-year career and told me that if he had played in this era, “I probably would have hit another 40 or 50 home runs.”
But Garvey, who started with the Dodgers in 1969, said the weather is just one of many factors that have led to more home runs in today's game, which has abandoned finesse in favor of brute force.
Garvey said the bats are harder, the balls are livelier, the pitchers throw harder (more velocity means more pop for hitters) and there is more talk about launch angles in baseball than at Cape Canaveral.
“We never heard the term 'launch angle,'” said Garvey, who told me he approached the plate trying to hit a line drive, not a moonshot.
“My goal used to be a .300 average, 200 hits, 100 RBIs and 20-plus home runs,” said Garvey, who hit 20 or more home runs six times, with a high of 33 in 1977.
Today's Dodgers have a lot of strength in their lineup, ranking only behind the Yankees in home runs as they go in search of a third consecutive World Series ring. They're in first place even though one of their biggest hitters, Shohei Ohtani, is a dozen home runs off last year's pace.
But Swain has good news for Ohtani, for Dodgers fans and for short-sleeve jersey manufacturers.
“This year, there will be exceptionally high humidity throughout most of the baseball season in Southern California due to the strong development of El Niño and record warm coastal ocean temperatures,” he said.
“So it's really plausible,” Swain continued, “that the combination of long-term warming due to climate change, plus short-term warming and increased humidity due to El Niño and nearshore ocean warming, could increase the number of home runs this season.”
We can only hope that the home team is the one that celebrates the most.
Go Dodgers.
