If you live in the eastern U.S., you are likely among the millions dealing with the aftereffects of the heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain that buried the region over the weekend. And while it may be extremely cold, new research reveals that last weekend’s weather was in fact supercharged by global warming.
Some of the hardest hit places saw more than two feet of snowfall, while up to an inch of ice from freezing rain shut down roads and cut power throughout the Southeast. No doubt, this storm was big. It was always going to pack a punch—but it dumped more frozen precipitation than it would have if the storm had occurred decades earlier. It may seem paradoxical that a warming climate could mean heavier snowfalls, but hotter, albeit still below freezing, temperatures are nonetheless a recipe for more snow.
That’s because for every one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, the atmosphere can hold about 7 percent more moisture. And this storm happened in an atmosphere that has become up to five degrees C (nine degrees F) warmer than it was in past decades, according to the research organization ClimaMeter, which produced the new analysis. That means that this storm had up to 20 percent more precipitation than it would have if there was no human-caused warming.
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Some regions of the U.S. could see more snow for a time as the planet’s temperature rises—particularly those places prone to lake-effect snow, because bodies of water take longer to freeze over in winter.
The effect of climate change on snowstorms means that “infrastructure and emergency planning standards, historically based on past snowfall records, may no longer be sufficient,” said analysis co-author Haosu Tang of the University of Sheffield in England in a statement.