World cup in the Arctic? Sport adaptation to extreme heat in a warming world

"One of the biggest challenges outdoor sport now faces is climate change, with extreme heat events becoming more frequent and intense. Even in the most optimistic future scenario, twice as many megacities could become heat stressed, exposing over 350 million people to deadly heat. How then will sport adapt?

We have already seen several examples in recent years. These range from simple interventions such as in-play drinks breaks to the design of air-conditioned stadia. More dramatically, we recently saw the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar moved from the traditional northern hemisphere summer to winter to escape the searing heat.

Locations have also been shifted, with the Marathon event at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games moved from Tokyo to the cooler city of Sapporo over 800 km further north. How much further might these changes go as climate change intensifies? Could we have sporting tournaments played out during the nighttime hours?

Could the format of the sport change completely from outdoors to indoors? As the project title suggests, could we really have a World Cup in the Arctic? These are the kind of speculative questions this project will try to answer.

The project aim is to examine and visualise how a selection of the world's most popular outdoor sports could adapt to extreme heat during the 21st century under different warming scenarios. The associated research objectives are as follows:

To determine 'sub-optimal' and 'dangerous' climatic thresholds for athletes competing in sports, and spectators (at rest) based on controlled performance trials, expert focus groups, and data mining.

To examine the spatial and temporal exceedance of the climatic thresholds established in objective 1 under baseline conditions and future scenarios of extreme heat based on observed and modelled climate data.

To produce imagined visualisations and design scenarios depicting major sporting tournaments in a warming world based on codesign methods and use of GIS StoryMaps.

In addition to the range of transferable skills a QUADRAT DTP project provides, this project will ensure the student will graduate a versatile and well-rounded researcher with expertise and skills applicable to both the physical and social sciences."