Pirate's Cove

This seems to be a variation on the old trope about being fewer hurricanes but them being much, much bigger. Of course, they mean that this is all your fault for your big carbon footprint, rather than something that keeps happening during the Holocene, ie, warm periods

With climate change, Washington may have entered era of more blockbuster snowstorms but less snow overall

As Washington’s winter climate has warmed several degrees over the past 120 years, average snowfall has declined by about half a foot, from roughly 21 inches to 15 inches. Yet recent decades have also featured several of the biggest snowstorms the city has ever recorded.

Snowfall trends in Washington, as well as other East Coast cities, are leading scientists to this conclusion: Global warming, while eating away at some snow events, may paradoxically be contributing to an uptick in big East Coast snowstorms.

Several recent studies show that this trend toward more blockbuster storms will continue into the coming decades, although there are open questions about how climate change is skewing the odds toward particular winter weather scenarios.

Judah Cohen, a meteorologist at AER, a Verisk Analytics company, has published multiple studies that link changing snowfall trends in the eastern United States to change in the Arctic. His research shows that the loss of Arctic sea ice is contributing to an increase in fall snowfall in parts of Siberia. This is, in turn, having an influence on weather across the Arctic, extending high into the atmosphere above the vast region, favoring weather patterns that tend to direct Arctic air into the Lower 48 states.

This kind of thing goes on for a bit, and, really, the whole point is to attempt to blame winter storms on anthropogenic climate change from greenhouse glasses, much like they’ve changed it from global warming to climate change so that all non-warming weather can be blamed. We’ve all seen them try this for several years, saying that snow storms and cold weather are worse due to carbon pollution.

For example, a computer modeling study published in Geophysical Research Letters last year found that smaller snowstorms will significantly diminish across a broad swath of the Northeast, including Washington, by late in the century. However, the bigger storms will get even more destructive and are unlikely to diminish in number, the study found.

Colin Zarzycki, the lead author of the study, says that as winters continue to warm, overall snowfall will decline in the Northeast, and the total number of snowfall events will also decline. However, when conditions align to produce snow, it will fall at more intense rates than typically occurs now. This will increase the odds of having a big snowstorm, he says.

Computer models.

However, all hope for D.C. snow lovers is far from lost. Big snowstorms still occur, and they may become more routine as air and sea surface temperatures warm, supercharging coastal storms. In addition, snow events have not dropped sharply yet in January and February, which tend to be the coldest winter months. But instead of expecting a winter full of small snow events to keep things looking wintry, it’s possible we’ve already entered a climate characterized more by a feast-or-famine scenario, in which a major snowstorm or two accounts for the bulk of our seasonal snowfall.

They love their doomsaying, eh?

Read: Hotcold Take: East Coast Will See More Big Snowstorms But Less Overall Snow »