• Question: Why has there been more snowfall in the UK in the last few years?

    Asked by ladysovereignezza to David, Luna, Mark, Melanie, Probash on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mark Vesey

      Mark Vesey answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      Chance I think. Some years we get more than others and we seem to have had 2 years with a lot of snow together. Some people attribute it to global warming but i’m not sure if this can be a definite reason at teh current time.

    • Photo: David Pyle

      David Pyle answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      There are a number of ideas about this, but I am not sure that anyone really knows. It’s probably just part of the typical pattern of weather ‘variability’ which means that you need 10 – 20 years of observations to be able to say what is ‘typical’ when it comes to weather.

      In both of the past couple of winters the long cold spells were due to weather circulation effects called ‘blocking events’. During these events, the usual winter westerly winds were deflected further south than the UK, while more (very) cold air came in from the north and east – the Arctic and Scandinavia. These sorts of cold, snowy winters, have happened in the past (most recently the late 1970’s/early 1980’s), so they’re nothing particularly unusual; but I don’t think anyone knows exactly why they happen, and what the relationship is to things like climate change and changing sea-ice cover in the Arctic.

    • Photo: Luna Munoz

      Luna Munoz answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Well, some scientists believe it may be climate change. It could also be just a trend in one direction and then it will switch.

    • Photo: Melanie Stefan

      Melanie Stefan answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      It might just be a series of unlucky years within normal year-to-year fluctuation. It might also be due to global warming. Global warming does not necessarily mean that it gets warmer at every single point on the planet – it might actually mean that some places get cooler, because the weather is subject to all kinds of complicated influences which are not always straight-forward.

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