From our friends at NASA comes, Winter Temperatures and the Arctic Oscillation:

If you live nearly anywhere in North America, Europe, or Asia, it’s no news that December 2009 and early January 2010 were cold. This image illustrates how cold December was compared to the average of temperatures recorded in December between 2000 and 2008. Blue points to colder than average land surface temperatures, while red indicates warmer temperatures. Much of the Northern Hemisphere experienced cold land surface temperatures, but the Arctic was exceptionally warm. This weather pattern is a tale-tell sign of the Arctic Oscillation.

The Arctic Oscillation is a climate pattern that influences winter weather in the Northern Hemisphere. It is defined by the pressure difference between air at mid-latitudes (around 45 degrees North, about the latitude of Montreal, Canada or Bordeaux, France) and air over the Arctic. A low-pressure air mass dominates the Arctic, while high pressure systems sit over the mid-latitudes. The strength of the high- and low-pressure systems oscillates. When the systems are weaker than normal, the pressure difference between the Arctic and mid-latitudes decreases, allowing chilly Arctic air to slide south while warmer air creeps north. A weaker-than-normal Arctic Oscillation is said to be negative. When high and low pressure systems are strong, the Arctic Oscillation is positive.

Throughout December 2009, the North Atlantic Oscillation was strongly negative, said the National Weather Service. This image shows the impact of the negative Arctic Oscillation on land surface temperatures throughout the Northern Hemisphere as observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Cold Arctic air chilled the land surface at midlatitudes, while Arctic land, such as Greenland and Alaska, was much warmer than usual.

Once again, let me point out: Despite what Some People would have you believe, the cold we’re experiencing right now is a weather phenomenon, not a climate phenomenon. In other words, it’s just the normal weirdness of a chaotic system that makes weather prediction so difficult, and has nothing to do with climate change.

After you get done gawking at the blue areas in the above map, look at the red areas, as in Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland. The heat isn’t gone, it’s just been rearranged by the current weather pattern.

I suppose you could argue about which is worse, to have that extra heat “down here” where it’s abnormal, or to have it “up there” where it does damage to the Greenland ice sheet and lets myopic fools assume it doesn’t exist at all. I’d rather have it down here, so we wouldn’t burn yet more fossil fuel for heating and we could avoid all the “where’s the global warming???” stupidity.

And in case you’re wondering what’s going on at the other end of the planet, it seems there’s a bit more melting all of a sudden:

This graph is from the NSIDC’s Sea Ice Index: Most Recent Daily Images, or you could just use my handy dandy energy and environment graphs page.