{"id":20883,"date":"2015-02-09T20:36:51","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T02:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=20883"},"modified":"2015-02-09T20:36:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-10T02:36:51","slug":"boston-snow-climate-change-amplified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/09\/boston-snow-climate-change-amplified\/","title":{"rendered":"Boston Snow Climate Change Amplified"},"content":{"rendered":"

New England is now experiencing the fifth in a series of worse than average winter storms. So far, Winter has dumped over 60 inches of snow on Boston, and after the present storm, it will probably be possible to say that a total of 60 inches or more have fallen there in just over 2 weeks, according to Paul Douglas<\/a>, meteorologist and founder of Media Logic Group. Douglas notes “I\u2019ve never seen a SST anomaly of +11.5C, but that\u2019s the case just east of Cape Cod. No wonder Boston is submerged…. Quite amazing, really.” As such, Boston has already broken it’s 30 day snowfall record going into the latest storm. According to Massachusetts Governor Baker, the region has had enough snow to fill Foxboro Stadium 90 times. That is, of course, a meaningless number for most people, but I can tell you (because I saw Paul McCartney there … I think a sports team also plays there), that iss a huge stadium and since it has no roof and one can pile the snow quite high, mighty impressive!<\/p>\n

The huge amount of snow falling on the region is normal snow amplified in amount by extraordinary sea surface temperatures, supplying more moisture and creating a stronger contrast across cold fonts moving through the region, which together brings more snow. The US National Climate Assessment indicates that there has already been an increase in extreme precipitation in the region, up over 71% in the Northeast, and climate experts predict further change in that direction. And it is costly. According to Climate Nexus<\/a>, it costs Boston about $300,000 for every inch of snow removal, and a large storm costs the state of Massachusetts about a quarter of a billion dollars.<\/p>\n

Severe weather is becoming the new normal. <\/a><\/p>\n

ADDED: There has been some denialist chatter on twitter suggesting that Paul Douglas, Michael Mann, Chris Mooney, and I got our facts wrong regarding SST temperatures. That chatter involves looking at the sea right next to Cape Cod. When we use the term “Off Cape Cod” when referring to a huge storm system and a subcontinent (northeastern US) we are using Cape Cod, which on the big map is a little hook shaped thing, to orient to that general area of the sea. So the complaints, I’m afraid, are mere yammering and of no consequence. Nonetheless, I did throw together a simple instructional graphic showing the 11C anomaly in relation to “off Cape Cod.” Here:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Featured Image Photo Credit: Aviad T<\/a> via Compfight<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New England is now experiencing the fifth in a series of worse than average winter storms. So far, Winter has dumped over 60 inches of snow on Boston, and after the present storm, it will probably be possible to say that a total of 60 inches or more have fallen there in just over 2 … Continue reading Boston Snow Climate Change Amplified<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[824,148,856,20,1192],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-5qP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}