Abstract
Due to climate change the frequency and character of precipitation are changing as the hydrological cycle intensifies. With regards to snowfall, global warming has two opposing influences; increasing humidity enables intense snowfall, whereas higher temperatures decrease the likelihood of snowfall. Here we show an intensification of extreme snowfall across large areas of the Northern Hemisphere under future warming. This is robust across an ensemble of global climate models when they are bias-corrected with observational data. While mean daily snowfall decreases, both the 99th and the 99.9th percentiles of daily snowfall increase in many regions in the next decades, especially for Northern America and Asia. Additionally, the average intensity of snowfall events exceeding these percentiles as experienced historically increases in many regions. This is likely to pose a challenge to municipalities in mid to high latitudes. Overall, extreme snowfall events are likely to become an increasingly important impact of climate change in the next decades, even if they will become rarer, but not necessarily less intense, in the second half of the century.
Highlights
Due to climate change the frequency and character of precipitation are changing as the hydrological cycle intensifies
For the latest round of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project, CMIP6, it has been shown that, for a fixed snow threshold and conversion ratio between liquid and solid precipitation, there is an increase in the occurrence of high snowfall events that can be attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in most parts of Asia, North America, and Greenland
Using an ensemble of ten model outputs, we compare extreme daily snowfall percentiles of the Northern Hemisphere land mass above 40◦ N for a historical climate (1851–1920) to a strong global warming scenario (SSP5-RCP8.5; we further provide analyses of SSP1RCP2.6 and SSP3-RCP7.0 scenarios in the supplement)
Summary
Due to climate change the frequency and character of precipitation are changing as the hydrological cycle intensifies. Snowfall and its extremes are a special case of precipitation, since the intensification of the hydrological cycle allows for potentially more snowfall, as long as temperatures remain sufficiently cold for snowfall to occur These opposing forces lead to a contrast between a substantial decrease of mean snowfall and a much less pronounced decrease of extreme snow e vents[5]. For a strong CO2 doubling experiment a weaker decrease of wind-driven heavy snowfall events is found when compared to the decrease of mean s nowfall[10] Adding to these model-based analyses of future snowfall, snow mass shows continental contrasts. Decreases of intense snowfall days are described for the remaining
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
