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It’s important not to speculate too much about how human activity may have influence the record-breaking deluge — no one weather event (or four blizzards) can be directly attributed to climate change. But the National Climate Assessment showed how heavy precipitation events increased between 1958 and 2012:
This sort of thing happens because of some simple rules of physics: warming oceans create more water vapor, and a warmer atmosphere is capable of holding more moisture. And the atmosphere is certainly warmer and moister than it was in the past. In mid-winter, which is when Boston got most of its snowfall, it’s still cold enough for that moisture to fall as snow. In fact, climate experts explain, it snows more when temperatures are just below the freezing point, instead of colder.
Scientists are still uncertain about what exactly winters of the future will look like, although they do know, contrary to what Sen. James Inhofe suggested by bringing a snowball onto the Senate floor, that we’ll still have winter. So far as records go, warmer temperatures in the fall and spring will cut short the overall snow season; enough so, perhaps, that total snowfall doesn’t increase. But when regions prone to blizzards do get hit, it’s more likely that they’re going to get hit hard.