Spatiotemporal Snowfall Trends in Central New York

Abstract

Central New York State, located at the intersection of the northeastern United States and the Great Lakes basin, is impacted by snowfall produced by lake-effect and non-lake-effect snowstorms. The purpose of this study is to determine the spatiotemporal patterns of snowfall in central New York and their possible underlying causes. Ninety-three Cooperative Observer Program stations are used in this study. Spatiotemporal patterns are analyzed using simple linear regressions, Pearson correlations, principal component analysis to identify regional clustering, and spatial snowfall distribution maps in the ArcGIS software. There are three key findings. First, when the longterm snowfall trend (1931/32-2011/12) is divided into two halves, a strong increase is present during the first half (1931/32-1971/72), followed by a lesser decrease in the second half (1971/72-2011/12). This result suggests that snowfall trends behave nonlinearly over the period of record. Second, central New York spatial snowfall patterns are similar to those for the whole Great Lakes basin. For example, for five distinct regions identified within central New York, regions closer to and leeward of Lake Ontario experience higher snowfall trends than regions farther away and not leeward of the lake. Third, as compared with precipitation totals (0.02), average air temperatures had the largest significant (r , 0.05) correlation (20.56) with seasonal snowfall totals in central New York. Findings from this study are valuable because they provide a basis for understanding snowfall patterns in a region that is affected by both non-lake-effect and lake-effect snowstorms.

Climatology of cold season lake‐effect cloud bands for the North American Great Lakes

“…However, the large number of LE events identified across the 17 cold seasons will be used in subsequent studies to explore the variability and significance of numerous factors influencing LE activity and snowfall trends that others have investigated with much smaller subsets of LE cases (e.g. Braham and Dungey, ; Norton and Bolsenga, ; Serreze et al ., ; Kunkel et al ., ; Burnett et al ., ; Ellis and Johnson, ; Grimaldi, ; Kunkel et al ., ; Bard and Kristovich, ; Hartnett et al ., ). Multi‐lake cloud bands …”

Spatio‐temporal November and March snowfall trends in the Lake Michigan region

“…This is consistent with 21st century projections of a decrease in the fraction of lake‐effect precipitation occurring as snowfall ( Notaro et al ., ; Suriano and Leathers, ), while adding context to the seasonal Lake Michigan results discussed in Clark et al . () and the observed snowfall trend reversal (reported for Lake Michigan and the eastern lakes) bracketing the 1970s (Bard and Kristovich, ; Hartnett et al ., ; Suriano and Leathers, ).…”

Climatological trends of snowfall over the Laurentian Great Lakes Basin

“…In the later half of the 20th and early 21st century, however, studies have shown a decrease in snowfall. For example, Bard and Kristovich () showed a decrease in snowfall along the leewards shores of Lake Michigan between 1980 and 2005, and Hartnett et al () also showed a snowfall decrease for central New York between 1971 and 2012. In southern Canada (southwards of 55°N) a negative trend of 0.65 cm/decade during this period was found, with the most decrease occurring in the 1980s (Krasting et al, ).…”

“…Finally, Hartnett et al . () determined spatio‐temporal snowfall patterns and their underlying causes for cities within central New York. All of the above mentioned studies have only analysed weather observation stations within the United States.…”