This of course is the same record-setting storm that dumped over 30 inches of the white stuff in western Mass. Once again, any single extreme event cannot be attributed to climate change, but we have been having quite a few around the globe the past few years. Western Massachusetts has had tornado producing storms and flooding from Hurricane Irene this year as well. I imagine a destabilized climate regime to be like the change of seasons in New England, greatly contrasting air masses leading to unstable moisture laden air and storms, but on a global scale. And for those who cannot connect heavy snow with global warming I would point out that in the spring in New England we have had some our heaviest snowfalls as the seasons change.
Let's not forget the ingoing flooding in Thailand and ongoing drought in Texas. By themselves they mean little on a global scale and there is always drought and flooding at any given time - but record breakers all over?
What we do know is that it is warming, and a Koch brothers financed dissection of the data has confirmed it. The spin has already started to discount this research, in some cases it is verging on hysteria.
Update:
Climate experts: Expect more extreme weather
Freakish weather disasters — from the sudden October snowstorm in the Northeast U.S. to the record floods in Thailand — are striking more often. And global warming is likely to spawn more similar weather extremes at a huge cost, says a draft summary of an international climate report obtained by The Associated Press. The report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be issued in a few weeks, after a meeting in Uganda. It says there is at least a 2-in-3 probability that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases.
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