Snow is increasingly rare in the Northern Hemisphere – 01/17/2024 – Lúcia Guimarães

New York dawned in white on Tuesday (16), a pastoral scene that lasted a few hours, until cars and rush hour crowds turned the streets into a gray soup. But this week’s precipitation brought back an inseparable element of local winter after more than 700 days.

Snowfalls are increasingly scarce and separated by greater intervals. Don’t be impressed by the extreme events that make up the news, like an airport buried in a single storm.

We are heading towards a reality of fewer winter sports — and the consequent displacement of local economies —, of fewer sources of inspiration for fiction — be it the horror of “The Shining” or the fantasy of “Frozen” — and, most frighteningly predictable , of more “snow droughts”, a phenomenon observed when the scarcity of snow prevents the formation of water reservoirs as the ice that melts and flows into rivers becomes scarce. And we cannot forget the disappointment of the unanimous children’s fans due to the ritual that begins the school year in the North, in January: classes suddenly canceled due to a blizzard.

Until the 1990s, snow hydrologists were still trying to decipher mysteries about precipitation and its relationship to climate change. In 2024, they know that the lack of snow is a bad sign.

Only now do I understand why, in the 1990s, I had to drive to the northernmost point of New York until I reached a clearing where the heavens granted the wishes of journalist Maria Lúcia Rangel, who called for snow as part of our winter schedule. I can’t forget the charm of the moment, two locals laughing with the abandon of children.

In that decade, the scarcity of white flakes already signaled how precipitation would react to climate change: in a non-linear way. In the following years, I didn’t suspect that my chances of having an advantage in facing epic storms in Manhattan, when everything stopped, would disappear, while the snow boots accumulated mold in the closet.

This Wednesday (17), we discovered that Greenland is losing 30 million tons of ice per hour, a rate 20% higher than scientists had predicted. The effect of the phenomenon on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Cell (AMOC), the system that regulates heat transfer from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, could be catastrophic.

Yes, lamenting the end of the romance with snow seems almost futile given the gigantism of climate change. But this change affects more than our basic livelihood. Ironically, on a recent scorching hot day in Rio, as the vacationing children demanded outdoor programs that this adopted New Yorker can’t handle in the 40°C heat, I used a new argument. “Let’s pretend we can’t go out because it snows so much and we’ll spend the day having fun indoors.”

More than half a century ago, a precious troubadour calmed us about the unknown of lunar exploration. Gilberto Gil urgently asked the poets to sing “perhaps the last moonlit nights.” Fortunately, the fears of the verses of “Lunik 9” did not come true. Who will be the minstrel of nostalgia for the white idyll?

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