Global warming debate heats up after heavy snows

Some people seem to think this winter's snows prove that global warming is a bunch of hot air.

They are wrong, the experts say.

"That is totally a red herring," said Jerry Stenger, director of the University of Virginia's climatology office.

"That's just silly," said Jim Kinter, a meteorologist and part-time George Mason University faculty member.

It's no more legitimate to say Virginia's heavy snows disprove global warming than to say Vancouver's unusual warmth at the start of the Olympics proves it.

People who make those kinds of leaps are confusing weather -- what's happening outside -- with climate, which is average conditions over a long time, the experts said.

If anything, Kinter said, global warming might -- and he emphasized "might" -- have contributed to this year's snows.

Here's how:

To get snow, you need a collision of warm, moist air with cold, dry air. Global warming might have helped produce extra moisture, and that could have resulted in extra snow, Kinter said.

But the main culprits behind this winter's snows, Kinter said, are two well-known meteorological phenomena -- the Arctic Oscillation, an expansion and contraction of cold air over the North Pole, and El Niño, a warming every few years of the tropical Pacific Ocean.

This winter, the Arctic Oscillation has sent cold air down from the north, particularly in December and February, and El Niño has increased the likelihood of severe coastal storms from Virginia through New England, Kinter said.

"To use the trite phrase, it's the perfect storm for getting blizzards on the East Coast," Kinter said. He is director of the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies, a Calverton, Md., nonprofit dedicated to climate research.

U.Va.'s Stenger said: "When we look at global climate change, one of the things we look at is globally average temperatures. When you're looking at your backyard, that's not the globe."

Richmond officially has gotten 28 inches of snow this winter, the 12th-highest total since record-keeping began in 1897. Parts of Northern Virginia have gotten more than 70 inches.

The Republican Party of Virginia issued a news release and a Web ad last month called "12 Inches of Global Warming."

Similarly, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican from Fairfax County, wrote in an e-mailed newsletter last month that he was looking "out the window at 30+ inches of global snowing."

Spokesmen for the state GOP and for Cuccinelli said the references were made tongue-in-cheek. But both expressed skepticism about man-made global warming, and Cuccinelli recently filed petitions seeking to block a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency that global warming poses a threat to people.

"That hard data is lacking," said Cuccinelli spokesman Brian J. Gottstein.

"Right now the science isn't there," said state GOP spokesman Garren Shipley.

Those light-hearted jabs at global warming drew an icy reaction from Republicans for Environmental Protection, a Michigan-based group with an office in Fairfax County.

"Surely there are more responsible ways of getting attention than implying that a snowstorm disproves the science linking heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions to climate change," said Jim DiPeso, the group's policy director.

Numerous well-respected science organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, agree that people are warming the planet by releasing gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

That doesn't stop people from spreading online observations like this one, by "RACE HARD," under a Richmond Times-Dispatch weather story in mid-February:

"This winter has put a kink in global warming, could use a little of it right about now."

All of which goes to show that it's hard to get people to agree on the cold, hard facts about warming.