Heavy snowfall in a warming world
A major new winter storm is headed east over the U.S. today, and threatens to dump a foot or more of snow on Philadelphia, New York City, and surrounding regions Tuesday and Wednesday. Philadelphia is still digging out from its second top-ten snowstorm of recorded history to hit the city this winter, and the streets are going to begin looking like canyons if this week's snowstorm adds a significant amount of snow to the incredible 28.5" that fell during "Snowmageddon" last Friday and Saturday. Philadelphia has had two snowstorms exceeding 23" this winter. According to the National Climatic Data Center, the return period for a 22+ inch snow storm is once every 100 years--and we've had two 100-year snow storms in Philadelphia this winter. It is true that if the winter pattern of jet stream location, sea surface temperatures, etc, are suitable for a 100-year storm to form, that will increase the chances for a second such storm to occur that same year, and thus the odds have having two 100-year storms the same year are not 1 in 10,000. Still, the two huge snowstorms this winter in the Mid-Atlantic are definitely a very rare event one should see only once every few hundred years, and is something that has not occurred since modern records began in 1870. The situation is similar for Baltimore and Washington D.C. According to the National Climatic Data Center, the expected return period in the Washington D.C./Baltimore region for snowstorms with more than 16 inches of snow is about once every 25 years. This one-two punch of two major Nor'easters in one winter with 16+ inches of snow is unprecedented in the historical record for the region, which goes back to the late 1800s.
Figure 1. Car buried in Virginia by "Snowmageddon" on February 8, 2010. Image credit: wunderphotographer Brabus Cave.
Top 9 snowstorms on record for Philadelphia:
1. 30.7", Jan 7-8, 1996
2. 28.5", Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
3. 23.2", Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
4. 21.3", Feb 11-12, 1983
5. 21.0", Dec 25-26, 1909
6. 19.4", Apr 3-4, 1915
7. 18.9", Feb 12-14, 1899
8. 16.7", Jan 22-24, 1935
9. 15.1", Feb 28-Mar 1, 1941
The top 10 snowstorms on record for Baltimore:
1. 28.2", Feb 15-18, 2003
2. 26.5", Jan 27-29, 1922
3. 24.8", Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
4. 22.8", Feb 11-12, 1983
5. 22.5", Jan 7-8, 1996
6. 22.0", Mar 29-30, 1942
7. 21.4", Feb 11-14, 1899
8. 21.0", Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
9. 20.0", Feb 18-19, 1979
10. 16.0", Mar 15-18, 1892
The top 10 snowstorms on record for Washington, D.C.:
1. 28.0", Jan 27-28, 1922
2. 20.5", Feb 11-13, 1899
3. 18.7", Feb 18-19, 1979
4. 17.8" Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
5. 17.1", Jan 6-8, 1996
6. 16.7", Feb 15-18, 2003
7. 16.6", Feb 11-12, 1983
8. 16.4", Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
9. 14.4", Feb 15-16, 1958
10. 14.4", Feb 7, 1936
Heavy snow events--a contradiction to global warming theory?
Global warming skeptics regularly have a field day whenever a record snow storm pounds the U.S., claiming that such events are inconsistent with a globe that is warming. If the globe is warming, there should, on average, be fewer days when it snows, and thus fewer snow storms. However, it is possible that if climate change is simultaneously causing an increase in ratio of snowstorms with very heavy snow to storms with ordinary amounts of snow, we could actually see an increase in very heavy snowstorms in some portions of the world. There is evidence that this is happening for winter storms in the Northeast U.S.--the mighty Nor'easters like the "Snowmageddon" storm of February 5-6 and "Snowpocalypse" of December 19, 2009. Let's take a look at the evidence. There are two requirements for a record snow storm:
1) A near-record amount of moisture in the air (or a very slow moving storm).
2) Temperatures cold enough for snow.
It's not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow in a world experiencing global warming. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the globe warmed 0.74°C (1.3°F) over the past 100 years. There will still be colder than average winters in a world that is experiencing warming, with plenty of opportunities for snow. The more difficult ingredient for producing a record snowstorm is the requirement of near-record levels of moisture. Global warming theory predicts that global precipitation will increase, and that heavy precipitation events--the ones most likely to cause flash flooding--will also increase. This occurs because as the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased by about 5% over the 20th century, and 4% since 1970. This extra moisture in the air will tend to produce heavier snowstorms, assuming it is cold enough to snow. Groisman et al. (2004) found a 14% increase in heavy (top 5%) and 20% increase in very heavy (top 1%) precipitation events in the U.S. over the past 100 years, though mainly in spring and summer. However, the authors did find a significant increase in winter heavy precipitation events have occurred in the Northeast U.S. This was echoed by Changnon et al. (2006), who found, "The temporal distribution of snowstorms exhibited wide fluctuations during 1901-2000, with downward 100-yr trends in the lower Midwest, South, and West Coast. Upward trends occurred in the upper Midwest, East, and Northeast, and the national trend for 1901-2000 was upward, corresponding to trends in strong cyclonic activity."
The strongest cold-season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent for the U.S.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) began as a presidential initiative in 1989 and was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606), which called for "a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change." This program has put out some excellent peer-reviewed science on climate change that, in my view, is as authoritative as the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. In 2009, the USGCRP put out its excellent U.S. Climate Impacts Report, summarizing the observed and forecast impacts of climate change on the U.S. The report's main conclusion about cold season storms was " Cold-season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent".
The report's more detailed analysis: "Large-scale storm systems are the dominant weather phenomenon during the cold season in the United States. Although the analysis of these storms is complicated by a relatively short length of most observational records and by the highly variable nature of strong storms, some clear patterns have emerged (Kunkel et al., 2008).
Storm tracks have shifted northward over the last 50 years as evidenced by a decrease in the frequency of storms in mid-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, while high-latitude activity has increased. There is also evidence of an increase in the intensity of storms in both the mid- and high-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, with greater confidence in the increases occurring in high latitudes (Kunkel et al., 2008). The northward shift is projected to continue, and strong cold season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent, with greater wind speeds and more extreme wave heights". The study also noted that we should expect an increase in lake-effect snowstorms over the next few decades. Lake-effect snow is produced by the strong flow of cold air across large areas of relatively warmer ice-free water. The report says, "As the climate has warmed, ice coverage on the Great Lakes has fallen. The maximum seasonal coverage of Great Lakes ice decreased at a rate of 8.4 percent per decade from 1973 through 2008, amounting to a roughly 30 percent decrease in ice coverage. This has created conditions conducive to greater evaporation of moisture and thus heavier snowstorms. Among recent extreme lake-effect snow events was a February 2007 10-day storm total of over 10 feet of snow in western New York state. Climate models suggest that lake-effect snowfalls are likely to increase over the next few decades. In the longer term, lake-effect snows are likely to decrease as temperatures continue to rise, with the precipitation then falling as rain".
Figure 2. The annual average number of snowstorms with a 6 inch (15.2 cm) or greater accumulation, from the years 1901 - 2001. A value of 0.1 means an average of one 6+ inch snowstorm every ten years. Image credit: Changnon, S.A., D. Changnon, and T.R. Karl, 2006, Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States, J. Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 45, 8, pp. 1141-1155, DOI: 10.1175/JAM2395.1.
More heavy snowstorms occur in warmer-than-average years
Another interesting result from the Changnon et al. (2006) paper (Figure 2) is the relationship between heavy snowstorms and the average winter temperature. For the contiguous U.S. between 1900 - 2001, the authors found that 61% - 80% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters with above normal temperatures. In other words, the old adage, "it's too cold to snow", has some truth to it. The authors also found that 61% - 85% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters that were wetter than average. The authors conclude, "a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches than in 1901 - 2000. The authors found that over the U.S. as a whole, there had been a slight but significant increase in heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches between 1901 - 2000. However, a separate paper by Houston and Changnon (2009), "Characteristics of the top ten snowstorms at First-Order Stations in the U.S.", found that there was no upward or downward trend in the very heaviest snowstorms for the contiguous U.S. between 1948 - 2001, as evaluated by looking at the top ten snowstorms for 121 major cities.
Commentary
One can "load the dice" in favor of events that used to be rare--or unheard of--if the climate is changing to a new state. It is quite possible that nature's weather dice have been loaded in favor of more intense Nor'easters for the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, thanks to the higher levels of moisture present in the air due to warmer global temperatures. It's worth mentioning that heavy snow storms should be getting increasingly rare for the extreme southern portion of the U.S. in coming decades. There's almost always high amounts of moisture available for a potential heavy snow in the South--just not enough cold air. With freezing temperatures expected to decrease and the jet stream and associated storm track expected to move northward, the extreme southern portion of the U.S. should see a reduction in both heavy and ordinary snow storms in the coming decades.
The CapitalClimate blog has a nice perspective on "Snowmageddon", and Joe Romm of climateprogress.org has some interesting things to say about snowstorms in a warming climate.
References
Changnon, S.A., D. Changnon, and T.R. Karl, 2006, , "Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States", J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 45, 1141.1155.
Groisman, P.Y., R.W. Knight, T.R. Karl, D.R. Easterling, B. Sun, and J.H. Lawrimore, 2004, "Contemporary Changes of the Hydrological Cycle over the Contiguous United States: Trends Derived from In Situ Observations," J. Hydrometeor., 5, 64-85.
Kunkel, K.E., P.D. Bromirski, H.E. Brooks, T. Cavazos, A.V. Douglas, D.R. Easterling, K.A. Emanuel, P.Ya. Groisman, G.J. Holland, T.R. Knutson, J.P. Kossin, P.D. Komar, D.H. Levinson, and R.L. Smith, 2008: Observed changes in weather and climate extremes. In: Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate: Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands [Karl, T.R., G.A. Meehl, C.D. Miller, S.J. Hassol, A.M. Waple, and W.L. Murray (eds.)]. Synthesis and Assessment Product 3.3. U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Washington, DC, pp. 35-80.
Congratulations, New Orleans!
Congratulations to everyone in New Orleans, for the Saints' Super Bowl victory! It's great to the see the city celebrating after enduring so many years of hardship in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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LOL and you calling people liars isnt slander?
Probably, at least everyone realises now not to take you and the others seriously. Childish bullying and personal insults on an internet blog, I hope you are really proud of yourselves. Can you please find another blog to be bullies on, it's not fun to read at all.
You obviously have no Legal Knowledge either!
It was worth it and I have stirred the pot with a ten foot spoon. Now its time to taste. Damit to much troll spray.
i have not yet seem such immature slander, and no one deserves the kind of treatment going down here. every single one of you who have engaged in these bashings of Jflorida ought to really be ashamed of yourselves.
i do read all his posts, and nothing i see warrants the behavior and maliciousness currently piling up here. i'm hoping for a slew of bans indeed, but i also call out to the regulars who are ACTUALLY mature and intelligent folk to please condemn this behavior as well.
slan·der (slndr)n.
1. Law Oral communication of false statements injurious to a person's reputation.
2. A false and malicious statement or report about someone.
You will not have a case against Storm because this has happened before in the past (see post 312 by CaneWarning). I wish you could tho...I would love to see you officially loose!
Publication of deliberately false climate change data literally ought — i.e., MUST — be treated, not as a peccadillo, but as a Crime Against Humanity.
My remark here is not an expression of an emotion, but of an intellectual and humanitarian reaction of a scientist to falsification of data that could be as bad in its effect as long-term global warming itself, by permitting the latter to thrive, and acquire an egregious and panhumanly disastrous momentum.
If this were World War III such people would be shot, and with far, far greater warrant than even those human catastrophes.
A scientist is a kind of Protective Angel for Humanity. Why? Simply because he lives and breathes for Truth.
——— * ———
As for the falsifiers of data, or criminal social parasites, let me switch from the second to the first of my scientific careers, long ago at M.I.T., where I was — a then VERY rare! — theorist in neuroscience, trying to make sense of the human brain as a whole and all the astonishing behavior and abilities it gives rise to.
A SIDE interest of mine, then and later, was the queer and baffling, and decidedly chilling, phenomenon of the psychopath, a.k.a. sociopath. The essential trait of such people is that have little or no conscience, and yet they can be at the same time profoundly convincing to the layman — i.e., virtually all of us.
The incidence of these curious and horrific people in the body of the whole of humanity is estimated to be of the order of 1/200. This is misleading, however, because the pathology is a matter of degree, or properly illustrated by an intensity-frequency curve.
To put it simply, a psychopath can and does lie without a blink, either external or internal. And often does so for profit or simply out of total indifference to the harm he works upon the innocent and the virtuous.
I have little doubt that the purveyors of purposefully, and dangerously, falsified Global Warming data ARE in many instances psychopaths, whose falsifications tend to put ALL of us at risk.
Even heads of great corporations can be, in various ways and degrees, psychopathic. (Psychopathy probably had some partly useful — personal OR social — function in the long-ago past of Homo sapiens. It is certainly common enough in our politicians nowadays!)
— Patrick Michael Gunkel (Princeton, NJ)
POSTSCRIPT: Two decades ago I was neutral, but skeptical, about global warming. Later I realized that we simply could not tolerate the risks it potentially posed. One does not play games, or take chances, when essentially the whole of civilization and humanity MAY be in peril.
None of us can escape from the need for such caution, and where even the very survival of our species over Eternity may just be confronted with the possibility of extinction through carelessness or ignorance, or a shallow and selfish morality, or ideology or skepticism, or a universal involvement in petty and personal disputes between men fighting in diapers. (Phenomena we have seen often enough in World Wars and in Wars Ancient, but no less pathetic and mindless.)
In short, All of the Future hangs by a single tenuous thread from each and ever Present.
I would suggest you have not read all of his post....You need to read a little more please.
SERIOUSLY!!
there is no reason whatsoever that an adult conversation can't be had about the GW vs AGW controversy.
Not being disrespectful, but if I was acting out of place and somebody did this to me. I would laugh and go about my business like every other day. I didnt threaten. I been poked at before. I got stuff that people photoshopped of me all over my office, it brings a smile.
I think I, and others, are responding to the bully.
Do you mean globally? Or just the US temperatures? I agree this winter has been unusually cold in the northern hemisphere, and should be remembered as such but the southern hemisphere has had unusually hot weather at the same time :)
its due to GW
I was specifically referring to the bashing of JFlorida.
I thought we were tracking the next BIG SNOW, which is looking to dump an additional 10-20" on the Mid Atlantic, NE and New England region. The forecast models are calling for RAPID intensification, BOMBING off the DE/VA region, affecting 40 million people. I believe this is more important, don't ya think!!
Yeaaaaaa, pretty normal for GW, think its summer there
I've been made fun of on here plenty, as have most regulars. If you don't want to give anyone ammunition, don't act like a prick and don't post your photo. I had my picture on here before and was called all sorts of names by people like Patrap who is a regular here...
I dont have a problem with his beliefs or ideas...the whole controversy is that he keeps bashing and insulting EVERYONe and ANYONE on the blog! Whether GW is "real" or "not", caused anthropogenically or not...if the earth is warming or cooling....thats not the controversy with him...hes rude and its uncalled for. CLEARLY if SO many people have issues with him, it is warranted! You should ACTUALLY read the things he is saying to others! I ENJOY reading conflicting views on GW, but I do NOT enjoy reading the condescending and rude remakrs he is consistantly making!
I don't think people are reacting at the picture per say, rather the really mean comments of a personal nature about appearance. You have to remember that different people come from different backgrounds, and what is "normal" in your workplace could be totally unacceptable at others...
That's my problem as well. He can believe what he wants. It's his attitude that gets me. Sometimes fire has to be fought with fire and I think that is what happened here today.
My point exactly. Lets get back to this monster storm brewing for the northeast. I still think they need to expand that winter storm watch further north then they have it now. I bet they will later tonight or tomorrow.
A new storm is expected to hit Southern California on Tuesday, bringing more rain to a region where successive storms have triggered mudslides and snarled commutes.
Monday is expected to be clear and sunny with clouds rolling in by evening. The new system is likely to roll in Tuesday with a 40% chance of showers starting Tuesday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.
The system is expected to continue into Wednesday. The storm appears to be less severe than those that pummeled the region Friday and Saturday, setting off destructive mudslides in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
“It really depends on the exact track of the system as to how much rain we will get,” said David Sweet, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
Whether the storm will pose a threat to fragile hillsides is related to the amount of thunderstorm activity associated with the system, Sweet said. Severe thunderstorms could produce intense periods of precipitation that could pose a problem for drainage systems.
Forecasters are expecting a half-inch of rain in the coastal and valley areas Tuesday and Wednesday, with up to 1 1/2 inches in the mountains. The storm also could bring cooler temperatures with highs in the 60s Monday. They are unlikely to reach much above 60 degrees Tuesday and Wednesday.
Full Article
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/02/new-storm-headed-to-southern-california.html
Plus Dr. Jeff Masters on "Heavy snowfall in a warming world"
Another massive mid-Atlantic precipitation event, another piece of nonsense from the anti-science crowd. Kevin Mooney of the American Spectator actually wrote an article titled, “Snowmageddon” Versus “Overwhelming Scientific Evidence,” which asserts:
This is the first time since record keeping started that two storms of such magnitude have hit the region during one winter. Already some localities are reporting the largest snowfall ever recorded.
To be sure, these events do not prove or disprove human caused global warming. But the momentum is now very much on the side of skeptical scientists who question these theories and President Obama should at least pull back from his awkward juxtapositions.
Yes, for the anti-science crowd, the kind of extreme precipitation event the mid-Atlantic states just experienced somehow weighs against the overwhelming scientific evidence for human-caused climate change — even though it is entirely consistent with the predictions of climate science (see Was the “Blizzard of 2009″ a “global warming type” of record snowfall — or an opportunity for the media to blow the extreme weather story (again)? and analysis by uber-meteorologist, Dr. Jeff Masters below).
Memo to anti-science crowd: Precipitation isn’t temperature!
What’s particularly laughable about Mooney’s article is that according to the UAH satellite data so beloved of the anti-science crowd, the storm occurred on the warmest February 6 — and indeed, during the warmest winter — in the temperature record (data here — the orange line ending in the white box in the figure above tracks temperatures in 2010).
Capital Climate has an excellent analysis on Super Storm 2010, which finds:
The conclusion I would draw from all of this is that the 2010 storm was distinct from other similar events in the past by having moisture be the dominant element over temperature in producing the extreme snow amounts.
Hmm. If only there were a theory to explain why we might be seeing massive amounts of moisture and extreme precipitation events….
The rest of this post is “Heavy snowfall in a warming world,” a reprint from the website of one of the best meteorologists around, Dr. Jeff Masters, former Hurricane Hunter and now Director of Meteorology for the Weather Underground.
Read Full Article
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/08/climate-science-extreme-weather-moisture-precipitation-warmes t-winter-satellite-record-deniers-jeff-masters/
An upper level storm system will approach the region Thursday. The atmosphere will be cold enough to support snow for most of the precipitation event north of a Lampasas to Waco to Athens line. Temperatures are currently forecast to be near freezing. If the system slows down...warmer temperatures are likely to move into the region due to a return of south winds. This would mean the expected snow would fall as a cold rain.
You are mistaken. I read this every day, and I seek out how he presents himself and his arguments specifically because of the cliquish and malicious attacks against him. Some of you pounce on his perspective not only when he's posting, but when he's clearly not around too. If I were him, or if YOU were him, we'd be feeling the same way and any measure of defensiveness would be completely warranted.
I think his error is engaging in arguments about AGW to people whose only predilection appears to be straight denial. I wish he would cease that activity, because it just brings so much viciousness to his door, and always from multiple sources. His beliefs go too far for me, and I disagree at times. But when people make an example out of him or make fun of his weight, I truly am disgusted.
And that is exactly what has gone on here, a disgusting display. Just disagree, state your case, and move on people...
Whoa there.... please show me something I posted that falls into that category before hurling that. Seriously. Look back. No insults from me, that I can remember.
Please do or remove my name from that post.
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