Drip-drop. Rain hits the rooftop of my house in a constant pitter-patter, like the sound Ms. Seibert puts on during every independent reading time. I sit, plopped in front of my desk like any other student and stare out the window at the rain, which has been falling in numbers as many as the snowflakes in a typical blizzard of times long past. Outside, the rain gathers in the detention pond by my house. Years ago, I remember taking a time-lapse of the rainwater as it filled the pond. Back then, the trees were green with leaves. Today, they are brown and bare.
Now comes the question: why was it raining at a time when snow would have been more welcome? And, even when snow began falling, it fell in meager amounts. So, what is the cause of these phenomena?
What is Decreasing our Snow?
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that snowfall has been decreasing in the U.S. since 1930 as a result of climate change, and Len Melisurgo of the NJ Advance Media has found that low-snow Decembers in New Jersey have taken place since 1934. Notice anything interesting? New Jersey’s Decembers have decreased in snow only after climate change lessened America’s snow!
What is Climate Change?
As you may already know, climate change, the altering of Earth’s climate, has occurred for as long as Earth has lived. Throughout its life, Earth has wandered between ice ages and warmer periods. 11,700 years ago, the most recent ice age ended and Earth began warming up. However, in the mid-1800s, Earth unnaturally picked up its pace and its temperature has been rising at an alarming rate.
Human activities have contributed to global warming by releasing an ever-increasing amount of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, according to the data that satellites and other machines have provided. These gases, which include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone, trap the Sun’s energy in the Earth’s atmosphere, as was proven by scientists in the mid-19th century. As a result, the additional energy quickly warms the entirety of Earth (the land, oceans, and atmosphere).
How Can We Prove That Global Warming is Occurring?
Evidence from ancient and current times in the form of both solids and gases suggests the existence of rapid, unnatural global warming. For instance, ice cores, cylinders of ice that are drilled from glaciers and ice sheets, were taken from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers. Ice cores contain small bubbles of air that were trapped as the ice froze. The bubbles provide an accurate sample of the proportions of the gases which composed Earth’s atmosphere at the time the ice was formed. Upon measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in each cylinder, scientists found how the concentration of the gas was stable over the last thousand years before it began rising in the early 1800s. Now, carbon dioxide’s concentration is 50% higher than it was before the industrial revolution of the mid-1800s. Besides ice cores, paleoclimate evidence such as ancient tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and sedimentary rocks prove how, right now, global warming is happening ten times faster than it usually is after an ice age. In terms of gas emissions, carbon dioxide, which is released by humans through the processes of burning fossil fuels, lessening the amount of forest cover, farming, and industrial activities, has been entering the atmosphere at a rate 250 times faster than it used to after Earth’s most recent Ice Age. So, there is irrefutable evidence of global warming.
So, how could global warming have lessened December’s snow?
How is Climate Change Decreasing our Snow?
As a region’s average temperature increases, so does the amount of water which evaporates from the land and oceans. With an increase in water vapor comes a rise in the amount of precipitation that the area experiences. The precipitation needs to take some form as it falls to the ground, and as long as the temperature is warm, it becomes rain. So, as the climate warms, snow turns into rain.
How Might Lessened Snow Affect Us Lakers?
While a decrease in snowfall can severely harm a town which thrives on snow-related activities, Mountain Lakes should not be worried. According to its official website, Mountain Lakes is busiest in the summer and offers the most activities during that season. Therefore, it’s far from being influenced by a loss in snow. Indeed, the worst possible outcome would be less playing or hiking in the snow, sledding, and ice-skating, all of which are not life-threatening. So, Mountain Lakes residents will not be severely affected by this current absence of snow.
What Should We Expect in the Future?
According to the Low-Snow Decembers in N.J. table, Decembers with little to no snow have not occurred in compliance to a pattern of some sort. On average, they take place approximately every eight years, so they should continue doing so.
Besides providing information on New Jersey’s low-snow Decembers, Melisurgo reveals an interesting pattern: after every low-snow December, New Jersey’s snowfall picks up sometime during the remaining months of winter and its inhabitants receive large amounts of snow as a result – more snow than is necessary for bringing about multiple snow days. And so, New Jersey’s weather once more shows the truth in K.A. Linde’s “The lowest lows bring the highest highs” as we will see that, the smaller the amount of snow we get in the early days of winter, the more snow will (hopefully) fall later on.
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