Ok, I finally got this one right.
Here is the National Climatic Data Center has released the January 2011 global temperature results. (mark this page – it’s a great one to refer to from time to time, and will help you win a lot of bar bets..)
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature anomaly for January 2011 was 0.38°C (0.68°F) above the 20th century average, resulting in the 17th warmest January since records began in 1880. Separately, both the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere land and ocean temperatures were also 0.38°C (0.68°F) above the 20th century average, resulting in the 21st warmest January for the Northern Hemisphere and the 15thwarmest on record for the Southern Hemisphere.
It’s going to be a hard sell as many heavily populated areas have seen below-average temps on January as the image suggests. Only northern Africa and the whole of the far northern hempisphere have been higher (much higher) than average.
People do have an erroneous habit of assuming that local weather is an indicator of the trend.
On an unrelated note, I just read a brilliant article on American addiction to cars:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/22/south-carolina-usdomesticpolicy
Scary stuff.
so what does the data mean?