Through a partnership with Nike, the Lab’s research has helped raise awareness around how climate change will affect the activities and pastimes that people love. The company teamed up with Lab researchers to study the connection between climate change and athletic performance and participation across a range of sports, from football and running to tennis. The Lab shows rising temperatures putting additional strain on the human body or making it harder for runners to clock a new personal best. The data also shows how climate change could push some of the world’s top competitions toward increasingly hot and exhausting conditions, and potentially decreasing the amount of time spent on the playing field.
Impact
To reach a broad audience in the sports world, the Lab helped Nike develop an interactive data visualization, showing the results through the lens of Nike-sponsored athletes. As millions around the world prepared to strike for climate action during New York Climate Week, Nike unveiled its “Move to Zero” initiative at a launch event in its New York City flagship store. In addition, Lab researchers prepared tailored talking points for Nike-sponsored athletes at the UN Youth Climate Action Summit in New York. Chloe Kim, PyeongChang 2018 snowboarding gold medalist; Rio 2016 fencing bronze medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad; and Joan Benoit Samuelson, gold medalist in the first-ever women’s Olympic marathon at the Olympic Games Los Angeles 1984, were among the athletes who the Lab educated on climate impacts to their sport and their hometowns.
