Climate change and snowstorms

Climate-change deniers such as Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe have claimed that recent heavy snows on the East Coast disprove the theory that the earth is warming because of human activities. Inter Press Service has an interesting counterpoint:

If anything, though, the weather should help discredit climate change deniers, contend major climate scientists and activists.

"Record snow is not in any way, shape, or form evidence against climate science and in fact it is largely consistent with it," Joseph Romm, a former Energy Department official in President Bill Clinton's administration and the editor of the Centre for American Progress's Climate Progress blog, said Thursday.

"I wouldn’t want to say global warming is the cause or the sole cause [of the snowstorms]…but we are in a warming trend," he said. "It is absurd when we are in an overall warming trend that a snowstorm is evidence of a cooling trend. But the anti-science side – the ideologues – have been trying to push the idea that we're in a cooling trend and that this is evidence of that."

In fact, increased snowfall is entirely in line with climate projections, said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist with WeatherUnderground.com.

While the current storms are likely due to "natural variability" – the "jet stream this year [happened to] set up in a path that includes these cities" on the eastern U.S. seaboard, he explained – they are nonetheless historically "extraordinary" and it is reasonable to expect global warming to bring more such storms in the future.

Romm agrees. "You heat up the planet and you put more moisture in the atmosphere, you get the more intense precipitation that has been observed globally and has been observed in the United States," he said.