Did you read that opinion piece in the Dec. 31 NY Times that illustrated the impact of climate change already occurring across the world? It was written in the form of 193 fictitious postcards from around the world depicting already-happening- climate change effects. Its main purpose was to warn us that these changes would soon lead to migrations from places that were becoming uninhabitable as the result of floods, fires, and extreme rises in temperature around the world. There were a couple of good things like Uruguay, of all places, generating 97% of its energy from renewable sources, and Belize has demonstrating that by planting fragments of surviving living coral can begin the restoration of coral reefs.One interesting “postcard” gave the reader the option of looking at the future climate impacts for US counties. For Erie, increased flooding came up as the primary risk due to increased rainfall and snowfall. Intrigued, I researched WNY winters and came across a report by meteorologist Heather Waldman of WGRZ. She pointed to a trend of averaging rising winter temperatures over the last fifty years as shown in the graph to the left. Did that mean less snowfall in Buffalo? Check out the figure below showing the variance from normal winter temperatures since 1991. The yellow bars indicate years that were significantly warmer than average. Also, the yellow-bar years are becoming more frequent, but it’s what else she found using this data that is most interesting. The years following warmer years of 1-2 degrees above normal had normal-to-generally- higher snowfall. However, years following those where the temperatures were two degrees or higher had lower snowfall. Her explanation is that the years of 1-2degrees higher temperatures support an ice-free lake, meaning more lake effect storms, but still support adequate snowfall , but those above two degrees just can’t support sufficient snowfall. We would end up with a rainy, wet, winter season. The trends of those two charts indicate warmer, but wet, soggy winters.She doesn’t discuss the summers, but I’ve seen other reports indicating that we should expect more 90-degree days during the summer, with even a few 100-degree days. Overall, the winters might become a bit more bearable but the summers more Florida-like. Maybe a trip to Maine, Labrador, or Halifax during the summer?The point of the Times article was concern about human migration across the world that could disrupt civilization. While we might be seeing a less drastic change here, we need to be aware that we still have a responsibility to manage our carbon footprint and greenhouse emissions to reduce impact across the world.
