A winter storm approaching the eastern United States as seen by NOAA's GOES satellite image on Monday.
The Great Blizzard of 2015 has fallen short of the more dire warnings so far, but it may have already delivered a timely lesson in how weather actually works: climate change could make future snowstorms
worse. So says a renowned
climate scientist:
“The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that nor’easters like this one may grow stronger [with] human-caused climate change, as they are driven by the contrast between cold Arctic air masses and ever-warming ocean surface temperatures,” says Penn State climatologist Michael Mann.
“We also know that ocean surface temperatures off the U.S. east coast right now are unusually warm, and there is no doubt that a component of that anomalous warmth is due to human-caused climate change,” Mann adds. “Those warm ocean temperatures also mean that there is more moisture in the air for this storm to feed on and to produce huge snowfalls inland.”
All other factors being equal, warm air holds more moisture than cool air. That's why the coldest regions on Earth are often the driest. The South Pole is one of those cold places, but it
never really snows there outside of occasional flurries of tiny ice grains. If our nor'easters warm up for any reason, even a little bit, it can spell more snow. In some cases and under the right conditions, a
lot more. And you can bet your bottom dollar that if and when that happens, deniers will trumpet any big snowfall as evidence
against climate change.
Rest assured, the usual suspects know full well that record cold and record snowfall are two distinctly different things. But they'll blur that distinction in a heartbeat to protect their patrons in the fossil fuel industry. Which is why this week's forecast calls for a 100 percent chance of Al Gore snowmen appearing soon in icy yards across New England.