Science: Snow Days

Living in the Northeast, we've been hit with what seems like a major snowstorm every week for this winter.  We've already had two snow days from work this winter, which is more than I can remember since I started my job, and it's only January.  We're already experiencing the snowiest January ever and we're only 20 inches from breaking the seasonal snowfall record.  This week, after 19 inches of now fell, New York City shut down its schools for a day, only the seventh time since 1978.  The temperature hasn't been that cold, which has resulted in dense, wet snow packs that are harder to move as well as slicker, icier roads when the melt freezes overnight.  I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with how fast the area has been able to clean the roads and plow the snow, but there's a breaking point---we're starting to run out of space to put the snow.  New Jersey roads, never the most wide to begin with, are starting to shrink as the snowbanks creep into the outer lanes.

So what's causing all of this unusual weather?  There's a hypothesis that the colder/wetter weather is due to an arctic bulge or oscillation.  As the ice in the arctic melts, this causes a feedback loop where the darker ocean surface absorbs more heat, in turn causing warmer arctic temperatures.  The warmer air rises and causes the jet stream to bulge out much farther south than normal.  The jet stream, which normally acts as a fence to keep the cold air contained over the arctic, then allows the cold air to escape over the mid United States, causing colder weather.  The cold weather hits the warmer, moister Atlantic air causing intense snowfall over the Eastern seaboard.

Of course, the elephant in the room is what is causing the arctic to warm.  Some atmospheric scientists are careful not to draw a trend based on the recent winters, particularly since there are other complicating factors such as La Nina/El Nino effects in the Pacific.  But it does seem like whether we want to admit it or not, the climate is changing, and we better make sure that we're ready for that.

By the way, it looks like there's another system with "significant snowfall" this week as well, just in time for a global conference we're having at work.  Good timing.