The Future of Lake-Effect Snow Storm: Warmer Lakes, More Precipitation
Lake effect snow (LES) forms when cold, dry air moves over a relatively warmer lake, causing increased moisture flux from the lake to the atmosphere, leading to enhanced cloud formation and subsequent precipitation. Recently, during November 17-20 2022, the Buffalo region in New York experienced a devastating LES storm. Located at the eastern tip of Lake Erie and downwind of winter winds with a long fetch over Lake Erie, Buffalo received nearly 7 feet of snowfall, with multiple counties declaring federal emergencies. The LES storm served as a reminder for the vulnerable communities to be better prepared for similar future events. Thus, in our study, we examined how such an LES storm might manifest in a warmer future climate by using the Pseudo-Global Warming (PGW) approach and a two-way coupled lake-atmosphere regional climate modeling system at cloud-resolving 4km scale. The modeling system consists of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, which is two-way coupled to a three-dimensional lake model based on the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM). Under the PGW approach, we incorporated projected atmospheric changes from a range of CMIP6 earth system models into a reanalysis climate dataset to produce the future atmospheric forcing required for our regional climate modeling system. Additionally, we incorporated the warming signals for the lakes using the projections for the entire water column of the lakes from a previously developed regional climate modeling system that also incorporated an FVCOM lake model. Our results showed that, under a high-emission scenario, the total precipitation for such an event by the end of this century could increase by 14% at the expense of decreased snowfall and increased rainfall. In the current climate, the majority of the precipitation during the event was snowfall, while in a warmer future climate, the precipitation could be split almost equally between rainfall and snowfall. Through two additional simulations where just either the lake or atmosphere was warmed individually using the projected future conditions, we found that the warmer lakes primarily contributed to the increase in precipitation through increased evaporation, while the warmer atmosphere primarily influenced the form of precipitation during such an LES storm in the future.