If you’re like me and look forward to snow about as much as you look forward to outpatient surgery, then recent winters have been almost blissful. Some of us on the East Coast haven’t seen any serious snowfall in nearly two years.
This is, contrary to my personal feelings, not good. Yes, warmer winters and fewer snowstorms mean fewer deaths from cold and less need to burn fossil fuels to heat homes. But robust winter weather provides many benefits for humanity, upsides that are disappearing as the climate changes and the planet warms.
Winter storms like the one that blanketed parts of the Northeast in snow last weekend will keep happening but less frequently. The long-term trend, especially in the normally colder parts of the United States and other countries, is warmer winters with less of the white stuff.
Why does snow matter? For one thing, people pay good money to play in it for some reason, generating billions of dollars in economic activity. Its melting provides water for drinking and agriculture in summer months. A cold, snowy winter keeps mosquitoes and other bugs in check while keeping some other plants and animals alive. It shortens the pollen season for allergy sufferers. Snow protects winter crops and cold helps fruit and nut trees.
Meanwhile, a hotter planet means more air conditioning in the other seasons, offsetting some of the benefit of less heating in the winter.
Most of the country has been well below snowfall averages for this time of year, according to the National Weather Service. Snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, which provides up to one-third of the state’s water supply, was near record lows at the start of January.
On the Great Lakes, ice cover recently was the lowest in at least 50 years.
In the Northeast, torrential December downpours brought flooding and ruined business at ski resorts. Though parts of New York state were slammed with heavy snow two weeks ago, New York City has now gone 694 days without at least 1 inch of snowfall, a record snow drought. Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have gone more than 700 days without.
Of course, it’s still early January. There are nearly two more months of “meteorological” winter to go and there’s plenty of snow in the near-term forecast.
And weather is always chaotic. Mild winters happened long before humans started warping the climate by burning fossil fuels. El Niño weather patterns in the East Pacific tend to raise temperatures in much of the U.S. With a strong El Niño underway right now, this winter was already expected to be a bust for much of the Northern Hemisphere, though we could still get blasted by a “polar vortex” or two before it’s all over.
But consider the long-term trends, and the effects of a heating planet are clearer. In all but seven of 240 United States cities studied by the nonprofit group Climate Central, average winter temperatures have risen since 1970 by an average of 3.8 degrees. Winter has warmed more in colder regions.
The effect this has on snowfall is complicated. But, again, the overall national trend is of shorter snow seasons, less snowfall and snowpack, thawing Alaskan permafrost and a higher percentage of winter precipitation falling as rain.
At the rate we’re cooking the planet, this is all just a taste of what’s to come. The best thing we can do now is turn off the oven. As that’s unlikely any time soon, scientists and policymakers should be busy adapting to the headaches that shrinking winters and snowfall will bring — the agricultural impacts, longer allergy seasons, resilient pests, water shortages, lost economic activity and more. Whatever our feelings about the season in the past, there is no doubt we’ll miss it when it’s gone.
Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist.
