I have had several requests to do a post on this, so here it is...........

Anthony Watts, whose work in checking surface observing stations, that I blogged about not too long ago recently compiled the four global temperature anomaly sets and noted that each set showed a fairly sharp drop of the global temperature anomaly over the past 12 months. You can see the charts right here on his site.

Keep in mind, this is just a 12-month period and the final plot of two data sets were still above normal, but is it the start of a new trend? I think it is way too early to tell, twelve months is a very short time when you are talking climate change. There is just not enough data yet to support the idea from some skeptical sources that the earth is now going to go into a longer term cooling trend. There could be a few reasons for this......La Nina, solar minimum.....check out the sun image below, do you see any sunspots?, and changing atmospheric wind currents. I just do not know for sure, and I do not think anyone really has the definite answer right now, but Anthony's work is applauded. It will be interesting to see how the global temperatures trend over the next couple of years.

Also, Anthony just attended the ICCC conference in New York and blogged about each day he was there. The New York Times John Tierney also writes about the conference. Here is the day 3 report from the Heartland Institute.

The quiet sun

UPDATE.........................

Dr. James Hansen, the director of the NASA GISS program offers his take on the recent cooling trend. You can read it here.