A USATODAY story claimed that the temperatures for 2007 for the Northern Hemisphere may be the warmest on record. Satellite and hemispheric station and ocean data from the Hadley Center updated through October 2007 say that has not been the case, and given the very cold weather in the cards for at least the first half of December (despite the warm NOAA December forecast), that will not change before the New Year. You can see that clearly by looking at the plotted monthly satellite lower tropospheric and UK Hadley Center Northern Hemispheric anomalies.

Monthly Northern Hemispheric temperature anomalies since 1979 from MSU satellite for the lower troposphere (blue) and Hadley Center combined land and marine temperature anomalies on a 5° by 5° grid-box basis (red). Click here for larger image.

See in this story how the changes coincided with major shifts in the phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation with the peak warmth at the end of the last warm phase. The recent cooling of the Pacific together with the looming solar decline warrant concern that temperatures have indeed peaked and a cooling either has begun or will soon begin and accelerate. A major cooling of the earth portends far more problems for mankind than the benign climate we have enjoyed for the last few decades. 

With the change in the Pacific, La Ninas will be more likely which suggest colder winters across Canada and the northern United States areas, where it has been especially mild in the recent decades, even when extreme cold came to parts of the east. The USATODAY story got that part correct. “U.S. winters have been milder-than-average for the past 10 years,” reports Michael Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center. Northern states have been particularly warm. He cautions that no link can be made between this string of mild winters and man-made climate change.