Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa just posted the latest MSU (Microwave Sounder Unit) data.

January posted a -.08°C near global anomaly between -70S and 82.5N latitude (the viewshed of the satellite sounder). That makes it the coldest month since January 2000, and the 2nd coldest January for the planet in 15 years. Both northern and southern hemispheres posted negative anomalies of -012°C and -.038°C respectively, happening for the first time since January 2000.

The United States posted a -.557°C anomaly for January 2008 and a -0.196°C anomaly for December 2007.

Here is the raw anomaly data for January 2008

Which can be viewed in its entirety here (.txt data)

Here is my plot of the raw, unedited Global anomaly data supplied by RSS per month. Note that the anomaly trend between late 2007 and early 2008 is quite steep and that the period leading  up to 2008 is relatively flat.  Source

Climate Science has made as one of its main conclusions that:

The recent prolonged rare cold and snow in China provides an excellent example to support this conclusion. As reported on China View under the title “Experts blame snow disaster on La Nina, atmospheric circulation” [thanks to ICECAP original posting on the China snows!]

"NANCHANG, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) — The rare prolonged snowstorms and low temperatures that have caused havoc in many parts of China are mainly related to the La Nina phenomenon and abnormal atmospheric circulation, Chinese meteorologists said.

The severe weather strongly resembled the aftermath of La Nina events, which indicated that the latest development of La Nina was a primary cause of the abnormal snow, meteorologists at the Jiangxi Provincial Meteorological Bureau said.

La Nina is a large pool of unusually cold water in the equatorial Pacific that develops every few years and influences global weather. It is the climatic opposite of El Nino, which is a warming of the Pacific.

Experts said that the latest La Nina conditions developed last August throughout the tropical Pacific and strengthened at the sharpest pace in 56 years. The sea-surface temperature during the past six months was 0.5 degree Celsius lower than normal years.

The Arctic is melting, right? There is simply no questioning this pillar of the greenhouse scare, and images of ice melting, polar bears struggling, and indigenous people crying the blues are all part of any self-respecting presentation of global warming. Imagine a study published in a major journal showing that a location in the Arctic has “a trend of -0.3°C over the last 1,500 years.” Of course, you would never have learned of such a result had you not discovered World Climate Report.

The article is forthcoming in Climate Dynamics, and the work was conducted by Håkan Grudd of Stockholm University’s Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, and despite the results, the research was not funded by industry. The focus here is the Torneträsk area in northern Sweden near 68.5°N (within the Arctic Circle) where Scots pines have been growing for millennia. Grudd not only sampled living trees, but he also collected subfossil samples found as dead wood on dry ground and from submerged logs retrieved from small mountain lakes. Many other studies have shown that the pines are sensitive to summer temperatures, so in theory, the tree samples should allow a very long term and relatively accurate reconstruction of past thermal conditions.

See this story in the New York Times. Millions of Chinese faced a humanitarian crisis on Friday as gasoline and food reserves dwindled and yet more bad weather was forecast for a country paralyzed by record-breaking cold and snow. More than 160 counties and cities in central China suffered blackouts and water shortages, the Xinhua news agency said, including Chenzhou, in Hunan Province, a city of four million that has been without power and water for more than a week. Stricken areas of south and central China are suffering the worst winter weather in half a century, with at least 60 people dead in weather-related accidents.

Hunan, Guizhou and Jiangxi were all facing fresh storms, and Mr. Zhu said the extreme weather could last another 10 days. Nearly six million passengers have been stranded on trains or in railroad stations in the past week. For millions of migrant workers, Lunar New Year is their only chance to see families all year.

Icecap Note: Our friends at the Metsul in Brazil remarked that this event is the “Chinese Katrina” in the sense of a social convulsion after a dramatic weather event. They also noted the Chinese news agency even published a webpage dedicated specially to this event.

We keep reading in these stories, that the cold or snow is the worst in 30 to 50 years. This may be because 30 to 50 years ago we were in the cold phase of the PDO and much of the time the warm phase of the AMO, which is currently the case. Recall we recently did a correlation of these factors at least in the US data (Iwe had little faith in any of the global data bases except the satellite and it only goes back to 1979). By the way the analysis was updated after commenters suggested a multiple regression approach. That actually led to even stronger correlation between the oceans and US temperatures (r-squared of 0.85). Source

In all the political brouhaha over ‘global warming’, and despite the 35 per cent rise in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide over pre-industrial conditions [from 1832 ice-core records of c. 284 ppmv to c. 384 ppmv in November, 2007), we too often forget that atmospheric CO2 levels remain at their lowest for 500 million years.

The graph, left, [a larger version (165 JPEG file) is available here ] has been taken from ‘Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for the last 500 million years ’ by Daniel H. Rothman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99 (7), April 2, 2002, pp. 4167-4171. The graph shows the fluctuations in the partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 (pCO2) over the last 500 My (million years), employing certain methodological improvements introduced by Rothman in his paper. The grey bars at the top of the graph represent cooler periods in the Earth’s history; the white spaces between are warmer periods. The time scale embraces minus 500 million years from the present, and includes the following geological periods: Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary. The grey area over the main curve illustrates the probable lower and upper limits employing wider parameters. 

The ‘Abstract’ summarizes this fascinating study as follows:
“The last 500 million years of the strontium-isotope record are shown to correlate significantly with the concurrent record of isotopic fractionation between inorganic and organic carbon after the effects of recycled sediment are removed from the strontium signal. The correlation is shown to result from the common dependence of both signals on weathering and magmatic processes. Because the long-term evolution of carbon dioxide levels depends similarly on weathering and magmatism, the relative fluctuations of CO2 levels are inferred from the shared fluctuations of the isotopic records. The resulting CO2 signal exhibits no systematic correspondence with the geologic record of climatic variations at tectonic time scales.”

British researchers say they have shown that a half-degree Celsius temperature rise in the Atlantic ocean can fuel a 40 percent increase in hurricanes. (See this article on how NOAA determined there would be LESS hurricanes)

The finding by the team from University College London is a contentious one in the debate over how climate change affects weather and, especially, storms.

"A 0.5 degree C increase in sea surface temperature is associated with a 40 percent increase in hurricane frequency and activity," the British researchers wrote in their report, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

The team showed ocean warming is directly linked to the frequency, strength and duration of hurricanes, said Adam Lea, the research scientist who co-led the study.

The study, which did not look at whether greenhouse gases linked to global warming played a role in increasing water temperature, will help scientists better predict how warmer oceans might affect hurricanes, he added in a telephone interview.