Why South Dakota Blizzard Fits with Global Warming
South Dakota and Wyoming are buried under almost four feet of fresh snow from an early season blizzard. Surprisingly we can expect more of this as the planet continues to warm.
The oceans have been getting warmer in the last few decades and that will almost certainly continue due to increased levels of greenhouse gases trapping heat. Warmer oceans mean more evaporation, therefore more moisture in the air.
That excess moisture will precipitate as higher rainfall, or SNOW depending on the prevailing temperature. The last two months have provided plenty of examples of record rainfall and flooding including Hungary, Miami, Portland-OR, Manilla, China — in fact all over the world.
As the jet stream of cold Arctic air changes shape and location with the warming, we will get unusually warm areas and unusually cold areas. When the excess moisture hits a cold area — voila, record snowfall.
In a recent post I explained that even the alleged slowdown in the warming is perfectly consistent with what we already understand about Earth’s climate system. As I pointed out there with a chart, there is strong evidence that the surface ocean layers have warmed so much, that the excess heat is now being transferred to deeper layers of the sea. Thus the leveling off of the warming in recent years is no reason to think the problem of continued overall planetary warming has gone away.
And the record droughts certainly fit into the same picture of unusual weather, part of what I have previously referred to as climate destabilization. New patterns for the seasonal air currents such as the jet stream will bring air that is warmer and drier to some locations, like the prolonged drought that has prevailed much of the year in the American Southwest.
We need to get used to this unusual weather. It’s the new normal.
Those that use events like these record snows to claim that the warming is over or the scientists are wrong are either badly misinformed or wish to misinform. It’s up to us to spread good information.