Snow -- Could this be global warming?
It may well be, says a Drexel University biology professor.
Snow -- Could this be global warming?
Intuitively, the atmosphere over Philadelphia appears to making an argument against global warming. Quite the contrary, counters Jim Spotila, a biology professor at Drexel University.
While he stops short of saying the two mega-storms this season represent smoking ice cubes, increased storm intensity is "consistent" with higher worldwide temperatures. Increased greenhouse gases would mean more water vapor to fuel storms, something he attributes to "simple physics."
The people who forecast the weather are more reluctant to bring global warming into the discussion; they have enough problems with tomorrow's weather.
Wes Junker, a former chief forecaster at National Weather Service headquarters and an expert in precipitation, cautioned that it one cannot draw conclusions from what happens in one season on one dot of the planet.
A few other cautionary notes:
The folks in snow-starved New York and southern New England are not complaining about increased storminess. (Although they might be by Wednesday.)
The mega-snowstorms this season have been extreme and unprecedented around here, and the region has never had two giant snowfalls within four days, as the forecasts are suggesting.
However, other winters have had a special pick on certain parts of the country. The winter of 1977-78, for example, hammered Boston; and two winters later, Norfolk, Va., got its turn.
Speaking of January 1978, the region had three substantial snowfall from the 13th to the 20th and two months' worth of precipitation in that week.
All that duly noted, Spotila says that at the very least the heightened storminess is "consistent" with what would be expected from a warming world.
"That's the key," he said.
that should have been comment not comet sorry— jr23- mwm-- Sorry, you can't have a "science-denying" threat until y'all bring some science. "Science-denying" means denial *of* science. All I'm denying is that you have any. The whole liberal "you must be dumb if you don't agree with me" line is getting just as threadbare as the "everything is Bush's fault" strategy. "Global warming" was just a quaintly looney theory until the Soros "civil society" quangocracy crowd latched onto it as an excuse to rape anybody who wasn't "a third -world country, the most vulnerable" and take a hefty slice of the profits as the money went by.— MaggieL
- Absolutely global warming is a scam. In the 1960s it was the coming ice age. Now it's global warming. Nature goes in cycles of thousands or millions of years. It's all to line their pockets with money. It's a theory, not fact. Actually a scam by politicians and scientists to get grants and more and more of our money for nonsense. Stay safe.— mas215
when did every F^^^^NG discussion in america become the conservatives verses the liberals? It's like people suddenly took notice of politics and used what they learned from watching sports and applied their knowledge. I dont anyone clearly is a devout of either.— selophane43- Obama blamed the Washington snow on Global Warming, so it must be true! http://www.climatejournal.org/— climatejournal.org
For Inquirer.com. Portions of this blog may also be found in the Inquirer's Sunday Health Section
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