Tom Nelson: Antarctica Snowfall Increase

Monday, January 21, 2008

LFC said...: Help me out here. Colder air is capable of transporting less moisture, and the Antarctic is the coldest place on earth. If its average temperature rises, the air can hold more moisture, which means it could produce more snow.

Here in the East, the biggest snowstorms are never associated with the coldest temperatures.

Am I wrong?; 9:17 PM, January 21, 2008
Tucano said...: I line near Washington, DC.
The big snowstorms around here happen when the local temperature is hovering near the freezing point and a warm air mass arrives from the south. The water in the air precipitates as snow. The "nor'easters" that usually bring a lot of snow to new England and points further north typically bring only rain to us.

The situation in Antartica is not too dissimilar. Moisture ladden winds blow from the warmer oceans into the interior of the frozen continent, there the moisture is transformed into snow by the low temperatures. As the northern hemisphere has warmed up in the past 20 years or so Antartica has cooled. Svensmark knows why! :)
[see "The Chilling Stars: The New Theory of Climate Change,"
Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder, Icon Books, Cambridge, UK, 2007, available from Amazon.com]

Dalcio; 1:35 PM, January 22, 2008

Tom Nelson