Big Snow and Ice Anomaly: Is PDO Flipping Cold?

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation of El Nino/La Nina cycles, has a strong influence on the weather of the planet. More La Ninas lead to cooler weather, and more El Ninos lead to warmer weather.

In January of this year, the snow and ice anomaly was the highest since 1966. The extraordinarily cold and icy winter in the Southern Hemisphere last July/August appears to have moved North for December/January. Are we moving into a colder 10-12 year cycle of the PDO? Is the PDO ready to flip?

Early in January 2007, the Phil Jones of the UK Hadley center predicted that 2007 would be the warmest on record due to the El Nino, which some scientists including Hansen predicted could be the strongest in history. Well of course the El Nino quickly faded and La Nina slowly came on during 2007. Temperatures globally cooled, starting in the Southern Hemisphere winter and then transitioning into the Northern Hemisphere winter. At the end of the year, the Hadley center announced it was the 7th warmest, blaming the oncoming La Nina for the cooling and busted forecast. This January, MSU satellite data indicated the globe was cooler than the 1979-98 average for the first time in years.___Source

If the PDO moves into a cooler phase at the same time the sun appears to be stuttering and balking its way into an uncertain cycle 24, what does that mean for the climate? We will have to keep watching, collecting data, and formulating hypotheses from the data. Then we will try as hard as we can to falsify the hypotheses we form. That is science.