Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 12:33:15 -0500
From: John Graybeal
Subject: Global Warming Helps Produce Blizzards
It is unsurprising that some climate change deniers had fun pointing out that the meeting of the Chatham County Climate Change Advisory Committee was canceled because lingering snow and ice on County side roads created hazardous driving conditions.
Alas, these lingering conditions and the big snow storm of last weekend (from which Chatham County was largely spared) don’t provide evidence that global warming has terminated.
Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautical Administration have found that 2015 was the hottest year on record. It is anticipated that 2016 will be even hotter. And we all remember the warm days we just had at Christmas-time. Records show that during the first 23 days of December, 2693 record daily highs in the U.S. were broken.. See http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/12/26/3735055/christmas-heat-records-shattered/
In fact, climate science actually predicts that global warming will produce more blizzards. Joe Romm’™s article in Climate Progress, “Why Big Blizzards in Winter Don’t Disprove Global Warming,†cites climate scientists Michael Mann of Penn State and Kevin Trenberth, formerly of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. They point out that the recent snow storm was caused in part by unusually warm Atlantic ocean surface temperatures and because human-caused climate change has produced a warmer atmosphere, which, as a result, contained 10 to 15% more water vapor, all available to produce rain and snow. Climate change is also altering the jet stream so as to slow down storm systems, resulting in more snow when there are cold temperatures. See http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/01/22/3741287/climate-science-blizzards/
The global warming threat is daunting. The Risky Business Report of 2014 found that over the past 30 years, the southeastern U.S. had experienced about 8 days per year with 95° temperatures but that, with business as usual, there will be 17 -52 such days by mid-century and 48 – 130 such days by century end.