If you tried to judge whether the 2008-2009 winter in the Northern Hemisphere was colder or milder than usual based on the conditions where you lived, it would be something like the ancient Indian story of the blind men and the elephant. If you couldn’t see the whole elephant, and you could only touch its leg, or its trunk, or its ears, would you be able to understand the whole creature? Our local weather provides us a similarly limited view of what is happening to the weather or climate on a global scale.
That point is illustrated by this land surface temperature anomaly map spanning the three months of meteorological: December 2008-February 2009. What is most disturbing is the scale – the anomaly range is +or- 12 oC or a total range of 24 degrees centigrade – HUGE.
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