A recent study shows a possible link between global warming and lake effect snow. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Richard Annal has more:
Transcript
A recent study shows a possible link between global warming and lake
effect snow. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Richard Annal has more:
The study was published in the Journal of Climate. When compared with the rest of the nation,
researchers found that the Great Lakes region had a significant increase in the amount of
snowfall.
Adam Burnett is an Associate Professor of Geography at Colgate University. He was the lead
researcher of the study. Burnett found that Warmer lake temperatures make ideal conditions for
lake effect snow.
“As cold air begins to blow across these warm lake surfaces that sets up the lake effect snow
processes. And the thinking is that perhaps global warming is being reflected by increases in the
thermal characteristics of the Great Lakes, which are then playing out in the Great Lake effect
snow.”
In the study, Burnett compared the snowfall from fifteen weather stations around the Great Lakes.
He examined records going back over seventy years. Syracuse, New York is one of the nations
snowiest cities. In terms of the amount of snowfall, it had five of it’s worst winters on record in
in the 1990’s, the warmest decade of the twentieth century.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Richard Annal.