CNN Cries Doom Over Snowfall Decline – Of Just 2 Percent

CNN published an article this weekend raising alarm about “disappearing” snowfall during the past 50 years, all the while burying the negligible amount of snow decline. By CNN’s own data, snowfall has declined merely 2 percent during the past half-century, which is statistically insignificant and barely measurable. Moreover, 1973 was an above-average snowfall year, so choosing 1973 as the starting point is dishonest. Finally, CNN failed to mention that snow cover trends have been flat for decades and are actually rising during the past 30 years. All these facts show that CNN – like climate activists do regarding so many climate issues – is crying ‘the sky is falling’ over essentially nothing.

CNN’s article, “New maps show where snowfall is disappearing,” was published on November 25 and quickly rose to the top of Google News searches for “climate change.”

“Snowfall is declining globally as temperatures warm because of human-caused climate change, a new analysis and maps from a NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] climate scientist show,” reads the article’s opening paragraph. The article then asserts that less snow somehow “threatens to disrupt food and water for billions of people.”

However, there is no decline at all in precipitation. In fact, NOAA reports there has been an increase in precipitation in recent decades. Instead, precipitation is merely shifting – on the very edge of wintry late fall and early spring – from snow to rain. How does more precipitation and longer growing seasons threaten to disrupt food and water for billions of people?

Worse, only after five paragraphs of alarm does CNN quietly note that snowfall has declined just 2 percent during the past half century. That is an almost indistinguishable small amount that can barely be measured. At that pace, it would take 250 years for a mere 10 percent of our current snowfall to then be falling as rain.

Still further, the snowfall data show an increase in snowfall in many American ski destinations like Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Utah. The lion’s share of the modest snow decline is in the U.S. Southeast, which does not receive much snowfall, anyway.

The choice of 1973 as a starting point is also suspect. Rutgers University Global Snow Lab tracks global snow cover going back to November 1966, when satellites first began to track global snow cover. The year 1973 had unusually high snow extent, even for the early years of snow measurement. If current snowfall was compared to1967, which was the first full year of the satellite record, CNN would be reporting on an increase rather than decrease in snowfall, and CNN would likely be crying alarm and blaming increasing snowfall on global warming, also. The same holds for an analysis beginning in 1990 or 2000, with snow cover modestly increasing since then.

In short, there is no declining snowfall crisis. There is only a crisis of media dishonesty regarding all things climate change.

[Photo courtesy of Pixabay.]