Publication Abstracts
McCray et al. 2023
McCray, C.D., , D. Paquin, M. Leduc, Z. Bi, M. Radiyat, C. Silverman, M. Spitz, and B.R. Brettschneider, 2023: Changing nature of high-impact snowfall events in Eastern North America. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 128, no. 13, e2023JD038804, doi:10.1029/2023JD038804.
Snowstorms cause substantial disruption in the eastern United States and Canada each winter. While reductions in annual snowfall are projected over most of this region due to anthropogenic global warming, daily snowfall extremes that have the greatest impact may not decrease in the same manner. We examine changes to two extreme snowfall metrics: the 95th percentile of daily snowfall (SF95, cm) and the number of events during which 10% of the mean annual snowfall is exceeded during a single day (TC10, events/yr). We explore changes to these metrics in two ensembles of the fifth-generation Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM5), including four 0.22° (≈25 km) simulations driven by different coupled general circulation models as well as the higher-resolution (0.11°, ≈12 km) ClimEx ensemble, driven by 50 members of a large initial-condition ensemble of one global model. We find that while mean annual snowfall is projected to decrease over our domain, SF95 is projected to remain relatively constant, suggesting that the most extreme daily snowfalls currently observed are likely to occur even in a warmer future climate. The region of the largest TC10 values exhibits a northward shift, with a larger percentage of annual snowfall occurring during a few large events along the U.S.-Canada border. These projected changes to the nature of snowfall events may have important socioeconomic consequences in this densely populated region of North America.
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BibTeX Citation
@article{mc02300g,
author={McCray, C. D. and Schmidt, G. A. and Paquin, D. and Leduc, M. and Bi, Z. and Radiyat, M. and Silverman, C. and Spitz, M. and Brettschneider, B. R.},
title={Changing nature of high-impact snowfall events in Eastern North America},
year={2023},
journal={Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres},
volume={128},
number={13},
pages={e2023JD038804},
doi={10.1029/2023JD038804},
}
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RIS Citation
TY - JOUR ID - mc02300g AU - McCray, C. D. AU - Schmidt, G. A. AU - Paquin, D. AU - Leduc, M. AU - Bi, Z. AU - Radiyat, M. AU - Silverman, C. AU - Spitz, M. AU - Brettschneider, B. R. PY - 2023 TI - Changing nature of high-impact snowfall events in Eastern North America JA - J. Geophys. Res. Atmos. JO - Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres VL - 128 IS - 13 SP - e2023JD038804 DO - 10.1029/2023JD038804 ER -
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