Opinion: Warmer climate and more snow

I’ve been waiting for someone to claim that this snowy winter proves the world’s climate is not warming. Now Gilbert Nadeau has done so. The facts show he is wrong.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20110209/OPINION02/702099963

Published February 9, 2011 in the Rutland Herald

Warmer climate and more snow

I’ve been waiting for someone to claim that this snowy winter proves the world’s climate is not warming. Now Gilbert Nadeau has done so. The facts show he is wrong.

Temperatures in the Arctic have averaged 8 to 11 degrees F. warmer than normal this winter, a huge rise. There is more open water and less sea ice than at any time since 1979, when satellite records began.

These changes have weakened the circum-polar vortex, a vast circular raceway of winds surrounding the Arctic that historically fenced in bitterly cold air. This weakening allows Arctic air, which seems cold to us even though it is warmer than usual, to flow south. Here it meets northward surface winds carrying more moisture than they used to, because oceans are warmer than in the past. When these winds meet, they create enormous snowstorms that drop more snow farther south than ever before.

There is another way to look at this. The world’s wind system is like a home hot air heating system, which moves heat from a furnace into a house. Ducts move hot air from the furnace into the house, but there must also be cold air return ducts to move cool air from the floor back to the furnace.

High-altitude winds move heat from southern areas to the poles, where it is radiated to space. Surface north winds return the air. As the world warms, these winds must speed up. And someone must live in the cold air return.

RICHARD ANDREWS

Springfield