Those living in colder climates are no strangers to the occasional heavy snowfall, but few would be remotely prepared for 16 billion tons of snow dropping down in just a few days. As unthinkable as it sounds, this surplus of snow hit Greenland in March 2022 — all from a single storm.
According to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, this extreme snowfall event can be explained by atmospheric rivers — narrow bands in the atmosphere that carry moisture and heat outside of Earth’s tropics. In this case, moisture flowed to cooler high latitudes and fell as solid precipitation at high elevations in Greenland.
The March 2022 storm delivered enough snow to offset the Greenland ice sheet’s annual ice loss by 8 percent, leading researchers to wonder how atmospheric rivers will impact the Arctic in the future.
