A warm shift at Chavez Ravine—tied to a weaker marine layer and backed by climate research—has helped turn the stadium into a prolific home-run park, even as longtime Dodgers players argue the sport has changed for many reasons beyond weather.
When the Dodgers took the field Monday night against Tampa Bay, the game came with a familiar soundtrack: the crack of a ball lifting toward the lights, and the quick surge of hope that it might carry just a little farther than it used to.
The broadcast framed it in atmospheric terms. The play-by-play announcer said that. for years. people treated it as an article of faith that fly balls didn’t travel far in the heavy night air of Chavez Ravine. But a Dodgers executive told him that. over the last several years. “in general. the marine layer is gone. ” and the ball has started to carry at night—something you can “see it now in the numbers.”.
That claim isn’t just nostalgia. Between 2020 and 2025. Dodger Stadium had more home runs than any other major league park. though this year’s total is lagging 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 is running slightly ahead of last year’s.
Still, climate change doesn’t get to take a victory lap by itself. Retired Dodgers great Steve Garvey is set to explain in the same spirit people always use to fight over credit in baseball—through the realities of hitters. pitchers. and strategy. And when the facts are laid out city by city and decade by decade. there are many contributors to home run totals. ranging from ballpark dimensions to playing strategies to the number of long-ball hitters in each lineup.
But for Dodgers fans. the marine layer point lands differently—because it turns a climate story into something measurable on a scoreboard. The warm-up isn’t imaginary either. In Game 2 of the 2017 World Series. the temperature at Dodger Stadium topped 100 when the first pitch was thrown. and the ballpark was “like a popcorn machine.” The Dodgers and Astros combined for a record eight home runs. and a Times story quoted a NASA climate scientist saying the marine layer was a no-show.
While watching Monday night’s game. the meteorologist warning neighbors about catastrophic weather tied to the Eaton fire was pulled into the conversation. Edgar McGregor. a Dodger fan and meteorologist who warned neighbors about the conditions tied to the Eaton fire. responded to the idea that fewer marine-layer nights could mean more home runs.
“There is absolute truth to that. ” McGregor said. explaining that “when oceanic temperatures are warmer. the marine layer is weaker.” He broke the physics down without romance: “Cold air is dense. so a baseball has to push more atoms out of the way as it travels deep. Warm air has lower density, so balls travel farther.”.
UC climate scientist Daniel Swain agreed the pattern won’t stay still. He said it will accelerate “for the rest of our lives as air continues to warm and baseballs continue to meet less and less resistance.” Swain also put a number on how much difference that makes. Balls travel four inches farther per 1 degree Fahrenheit increase. meaning the average hit goes about 1–2 feet further than it would have in the early 20th century.
A foot or two doesn’t sound like the stuff of legends. But baseball is built on thousands of swings. Swain’s point, as the research he shared suggests, is that small changes can turn outs into doubles, triples, and home runs when the sample size is big enough.
He sent a 2023 study from the American Meteorological Society journal titled “Global warming. home runs. and the future of America’s pastime.” Researchers reviewed data between 2010 and 2019. finding that “higher temperatures substantially increase home runs. ” with about 50 per year “attributable to historical warming.” Across that span. the estimate works out to about 500 more home runs. The study’s conclusion is blunt: “Each degree of global warming is associated with an additional 95 home runs per baseball season.”.
On the field Monday night, those outcomes didn’t require a climate lecture to feel real. Kyle Tucker pumped one that made it just over the right field wall. and Miguel Rojas delivered the game-winner with a shot that barely cleared the left field fence—moments that can erase the rest of the world for a few minutes.
And yet the emotion here is tangled. If a home run is a cause for celebration. the science that helps explain why the ball might carry farther also belongs to the larger story of a warming planet. It’s the kind of contradiction people notice even when they’re just trying to enjoy a game: the same shift that changes a stadium’s atmosphere can also be part of a broader set of consequences everyone lives with.
The marine layer hasn’t disappeared entirely, either. May gray and June gloom still arrived this year. But the question lingers for anyone who played before the air changed. James Loney. who played first base for the Dodgers from 2006 to 2012 and hit 106 career homers with three teams. remembered the difference between eras without turning it into an excuse.
“There is no question that. ” he said—adding that he remembered some balls just not traveling far. especially compared to day games. Loney said today’s Dodgers hit a lot of home runs primarily because the lineup is stacked. and he recalled visiting players hammering the long ball and then turning back toward the dugout after watching their drive—thinking “they had a home run.”.
Garvey, too, carries the authority of experience. He slugged 272 home runs in his 18-year career and told the story of what might have been. “I probably would have hit another 40 or 50 home runs” if he were playing in this era. Garvey started with the Dodgers in 1969.
But Garvey also pushed back on the idea that weather alone explains the current barrage. He said weather is one of many factors that have led to more home runs in today’s game. which has abandoned finesse in favor of brute force. He pointed to bats that are harder. balls that are livelier. and pitchers throwing harder—more velocity means more pop for batters. He also said launch angles are discussed more in baseball now than they were during his time.
“We never heard the term ‘launch angle,’” Garvey said. His approach back then was simpler: he went up to the plate trying to hit a line drive. not a moon shot. He described the goals that guided him—“a .300 average. 200 hits. 100 RBIs and 20-plus home runs.” He hit 20 or more home runs six times. with a high of 33 in 1977.
What’s happening now isn’t just a theory about the air. Today’s Dodgers have plenty of power, ranking behind only the Yankees in home runs so far as they chase a third straight World Series ring. They’re in first place even though Shohei Ohtani is about a dozen homers shy of last year’s pace.
Swain offered a final twist for fans wondering whether the atmosphere might keep helping. He said this year. there is going to be exceptionally high humidity for most of the baseball season in Southern California due to the developing very strong El Niño event and record warm coastal ocean temperatures. He said it’s “indeed plausible” that the combination of long-term warming from climate change. plus shorter-term warming and humidity increase from El Niño and near-shore ocean warming. might increase the number of home runs this season.
So on nights like Monday’s. when the ball sails and the stadium erupts. the marine layer isn’t just a weather pattern. It’s part of what people will argue about long after the final out. And for a sport built on small margins. the difference between dense cold air and warmer air is enough to shift what lands in the stands—one flight at a time.
Go Dodgers.
Dodgers Chavez Ravine home runs marine layer climate change El Niño Daniel Swain Edgar McGregor Steve Garvey baseball