Climate change is altering the smell of snow [View all]

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Science

Climate change is altering the smell of snow

Its scent is getting stronger as both the atmosphere and the land get warmer, researchers say

By Dawn Fallik
Yesterday at 9:00 a.m. EST

How would you describe the scent of winter? ... Unlike spring, summer and fall, which have strongly defined aromas (flowers in bloom, beaches, decaying leaves), the current season is marked by the scent of nothing. Nothing’s growing. Nothing’s dying. It’s a kind of olfactory pause.

But snow has a scent, and researchers say that scent depends on what’s in the ground and the air. And as both the atmosphere and the land are getting warmer, the scent of snow is getting stronger.

Johan Lundstrom, a professor of clinical neuroscience who describes himself as a “smell researcher” at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, said because snow’s smell reflects the impurities in the air, the flakes in Wisconsin smell different from snow in Sweden, and from snow in a city.

[The scent of a season: Explaining the aromas of fall]

Lundstrom said that people notice smells more in the summer because the humid and warmer air intensifies odor molecules, in the same way perfume smells more intense and different on the skin than when it is sprayed in the air. But the cold and dry air of winter makes for a “poor odor environment.”

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By Dawn Fallik
Dawn Fallik is a Philadelphia-based medical reporter and an associate professor at the University of Delaware. She is working on a book about the medical consequences of chronic loneliness. Twitter https://twitter.com/dfallik