Blizzards and Global Warming

Washington DC is covered in snow. A new record has been set. Does this mean that global warming has stopped? Or is the unusual snowfall actually caused by global warming?

I'll take the second question first - did global warming cause the massive snowstorm?

But as far as winter storms go, shouldn't climate change make it too warm for snow to fall? Eventually that is likely to happen - but probably not for a while. In the meantime, warmer air could be supercharged with moisture and, as long as the temperature remains below 32°F, it will result in blizzards rather than drenching winter rainstorms. And while the mid-Atlantic has borne the brunt of the snowfall so far this winter, areas near lakes may get hit even worse. As global temperatures have risen, the winter ice cover over the Great Lakes has shrunk, which has led to even more moisture in the atmosphere and more snow in the already hard-hit Great Lakes region, according to a 2003 study in the Journal of Climate. (Read "Climate Accord Suggests a Global Will, if Not a Way.")

Is that what happened here? No. A 2003 study has little to do with actual conditions in 2010. Remember, the northern hemisphere spent January in a cold wave unseen since the 1970s. But that isn't where these storms came from, anyway. They came from the south.

But there have been hints that it was coming. The 2009 U.S. Climate Impacts Report found that large-scale cold-weather storm systems have gradually tracked to the north in the U.S. over the past 50 years. While the frequency of storms in the middle latitudes has decreased as the climate has warmed, the intensity of those storms has increased. That's in part because of global warming - hotter air can hold more moisture, so when a storm gathers it can unleash massive amounts of snow. Colder air, by contrast, is drier; if we were in a truly vicious cold snap, like the one that occurred over much of the East Coast during parts of January, we would be unlikely to see heavy snowfall.

There are some problems in this statement, also. It conflated storms tracking further north than previously with warming air without bothering to establish any connection between the two. What we are left with is that these storms would ordinarily have tracked further south where they would have dumped their moisture as rain instead of snow. Was this caused by global warming or by natural, cyclical changed like the multi-decadal oscillations? You aren't going to even hear this as a possibility.

So what does this mean for global warming? Nothing. Its a weather event, not a climate. To quote RFK jr:

...If you sit on a beach for a few minutes and watch the waves come in, you'll see lots of waves of different sizes. If you sit there for six hours, you'll see the tides going in and out. ...

There is a very real possibility that we have been watching the tide come in and assuming that the land is sinking when it is just the tide. Kennedy will not admit it but there is some evidence that the tide peaked a few years ago and is on the way out. In the meantime, global warming alarmists are trying to have it both ways. A lack of snow in Canada and a surplus of snow in DC are both given as signs of global warming. They are not. Weather happens and records are broken.