Snow and ice storms

Overview

Winter storms bring strong winds, heavy snow, ice, and cold temperatures, which have significant impacts on society and human life. Though the winter speeds of winters storms do not reach those of cyclones, they can cause as much damage as hurricanes by sweeping across a much broader area. In fact, winter storm is one of the seven disaster types that cause billion dollars losses in the US. It is also one of the most destructive natural disaster in Europe. During the winters 1990 and 1999 storm damages in Europe results in more than 10 billion euros paid by insurance companies; the economic losses were about twice as high. The powerful winter storm Uri cost overall losses of around 30 billion dollars, being the most costly winter storm so far.

Losses from winter storms come chiefly from damage to buildings, vehicles and infrastructure -- winter storms can cause widespread power outages, road closures, supply chain disruptions, and health risks,

This is done by bringing strong winds, heavy snowfall or freezing rain, as well as cold temperatures. The impact of winter storms is nicely summarized by IPCC AR6 as below:

"Heavy snowfall is a substantial concern for cities, settlements and key transportation and energy infrastructure. Heavy snowfall can interfere with transportation and cause a loss of both work and school days depending on local snow removal infrastructure. Freezing rain and ice storms can be treacherous for road and air travel, and can knock down power and telecommunication lines if ice accumulation is high. Rain-on-snow events can create a solid barrier that hinders wildlife and livestock grazing that is important to indigenous communities. Shifts in the frequency, seasonal timing and regions susceptible to ice storms alter risks for agriculture and infrastructure."

Risk analysis

There are now very little studies on projection of heavy snowfall and ice storms separately in the future. This is because projection of winter storm in general requires resolution beyond the ones currently available for climate models, let alone the difficulty to separate snow and rainfall in the model. Instead, metrics of generally characterizing the storminess and storm track activity is available.

With global warming: revealed a decrease in the number of storms over the mid-latitude regions of Canada. However, intense storms with a longer duration are projected over all regions at the end of the century.

Climate change studies offer contrasting projections regarding the number of winter storms. These scientific studies indicate that the risk of severe winter storms, and possibly also autumn storms, from the North Atlantic to central Europe could increase in the 21st century, while the overall number of storms is likely to decrease.

Numerous risk models are available in the form of either open-source of proprietary.

Munich Re’s NatCatSERVICE is one of the world’s most comprehensive databases for analysing and evaluating losses caused by natural disasters. For this service, Munich Re has for decades been systematically recording in detail all essential information on loss events worldwide. This is stored in a digital catalogue of events and damage. https://www.munichre.com/en/solutions/for-industry-clients/natcatservice.html

• G20 climate risk analysis: https://www.cmcc.it/g20
• climate related economic losses: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/datahub/datahubitem-view/1fac8253-3df7-4408-b5fa-a6f2dc524182
• Economic losses from climate-related extremes in Europe https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/datahub/datahubitem-view/77389680-ecd2-4f56-926f-8106061a5570

1.

Not much studies on projection of snow storm changes, like intensity, frequency, because of the resolution and it is hard to separate snow and precipitation.

There are projection of winter storm in general. Storminess, Storm track activity.

No data either. But CONUS 404 is in development. We may look forward to it.