They’ll never let this go
Paradox between warming climate and intense snowstorms, say scientists
There is a complex, counterintuitive relationship between rising global temperatures and the likelihood of increasingly intense snowstorms across Canada.
Winters are becoming on average milder and warmer than they used to be, but there has also been a noted rise across the country in extreme weather events, such as intense snowstorms, said John Clague, a professor of geosciences at Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, B.C.
People might think it illogical that parts of the country are seeing more snowstorms as the climate warms, he said. “What climate modelers are finding is that climate change involves more frequent extremes.”
“That means during summer, you can have extreme high temperatures, kind of life-threatening high temperatures, such as they’ve experienced in India and Pakistan in recent years. And you also can have, during winter, these extreme cold conditions.”
Yeah, yeah, polar vortex, blah blah blah. Does this mean that winters aren’t as snowy during cold periods? No matter what, the Cult of Climastrology will blame it on mankind’s release of greenhouse gases.
Feltmate said the symphony of winter storms from Vancouver to Toronto and the Maritimes can be attributed to climate change. He used a baseball analogy to illustrate the link between climate change and recent severe weather events — the heat dome, atmospheric rivers, post-tropical storm Fiona, and “mammoth” snowstorms.
“It’s a little bit like saying you have a baseball player who’s gone on steroids. And all of a sudden that baseball player starts to hit five times as many home runs,” Feltmate said.
“You can’t say that any single home run is due to the steroids. But if he or she is hitting five times as many home runs, then you can pretty much say cause and effect is going on between taking the steroids and hitting home runs. With climate change, we have extreme weather on steroids — and the steroids are here to stay.”
