At a Glance

There will be fewer smaller winter storms and less snowfall by late century.The frequency and intensity of the larger nor'easters is not expected to change.

A warming climate is expected to bring less overall snowfall in the United States and fewer small snowstorms, but it is not expected to change the number or frequency of larger nor'easters that frequent the Eastern Seaboard every decade or so, a new study says.

"What this research finds is almost all of the occurs in weaker, more nuisance-type events," Colin Zarzycki, author of the study and atmospheric scientist, said in a press release. "The really crippling storms that have major regional impacts on transportation, on the economy, on infrastructure are not significantly mitigated in a warming climate."

Published in Geophysical Research Letters and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and NASA, Zarzycki's paper focused on how — powerful storms that can bring blizzard conditions and coastal flooding to densely populated areas in the Northeast. These larger storms can lead to economic damage that can reach into the billions of dollars.

Zarzycki used an already existing set of computer simulations that used a "business as usual" approach to greenhouse gas emissions and applied an algorithm that pulled out and counted the number of snowstorms.

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He found that smaller storms that occur every one to two years today will become almost twice as rare by late century, while the frequency and intensity of the larger, more destructive storms, which only occur every decade or so, won't change.

Several factors will influence both large and small nor'easters: a shorter snow season, the atmosphere's ability to hold more water, a warming of ocean waters that fuel powerful storms and increased energy in the warmer atmosphere that can "turbocharge storms when conditions are lined up."

"We'll have fewer storms overall in the future, but when the atmospheric conditions align they'll still pack a wallop, with incredibly heavy snowfall rates," Zarzycki said.