It’s not exactly The Day After Tomorrow bad, but a NASA study has found that storms are getting stronger and changing our planet’s water and temperature cycles. And not for the better either.

Forty years of gradual global warming may have led to less rain and snow storms around the Earth’s mid-latitudes, but the storms that do occur are stronger, toss up more reflective clouds in the atmosphere, which reflects sunlight and cools the planet.

To clarify, the mid-latitudes of the Earth run from the subtropics to the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle, which pretty much means every continent home to people.

Researchers at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University right here in New York City used orbital data from weather satellites to conduct their study, which appeared in the January issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Their climate models show that rising carbon dioxide levels will lead to “fewer, but more potent” storms in the future, which we’ve already seen over the last 50 years.

A separate study confirmed the effects of warming on Earth’s glacial ice sheets. [Respective abstracts are here and here.]

The point is, global warming is happening now and changing our climate. That much appears obvious, as is the fact that if left unchecked, we’ll all be worse for wear.

Three blizzards in annual succession and the biggest snow storm - wimpy as it was - to hit New York since records began are enough for me. After all, we can’t all be Dennis Quaid.