Well... it's been awhile since I've visited this one. Okay, so the rabid AGW predictions leaned heavily towards an ice-free Arctic this summer and that just didn't happen. While lower than the average minimum ice extent, this summer's Arctic ice was still greater than last year's melt and it's coming back quite a bit faster than last year, too, in spite of the SST anomaly charts showing excessively warm sea surface temperatures.
Positive OLR (Outgoing Longwave Radiation) anomalies for the planet as a whole are indicating that we're consistently losing more heat energy to space than we've been absorbing for months and months now. We've also been running a predominantly negative GLAAM anomaly for many years now and, I'm sorry, you just can't retain heat with that going on.
In short, we're still cooling and at a pretty fair clip. Truth be told, faster than we'd like because with the leftover warmth in the sea surface temperatures, we're bound to get quite a bit of precipitation for awhile longer. Except California--the negative PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) will see to there being a relative drought there for years to come. That, by the way, is VERY bad news for California and the U.S. as a whole. There's nothing to be done about it, either, as that particular weather pattern isn't considered to be related in any way to Global Warming, whether natural or manmade.
Pidgey
