Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming - NYTimes.com

THE earth continues to get warmer, yet it’s feeling a lot colder outside. Over the past few weeks, subzero temperatures in Poland claimed 66 lives; snow arrived in Seattle well before the winter solstice, and fell heavily enough in Minneapolis to make the roof of the Metrodome collapse; and last week blizzards closed Europe’s busiest airports in London and Frankfurt for days, stranding holiday travelers. The snow and record cold have invaded the Eastern United States, with more bad weather predicted.

All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organization report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record, and 2001 through 2010 the warmest decade on record.

How can we reconcile this? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes. Last winter, too, was exceptionally snowy and cold across the Eastern United States and Eurasia, as were seven of the previous nine winters.

Why is it so cold? Simple... it's the North Atlantic Oscillation - and it's got a bit stuck | Mail Online

The NAO has been in a generally positive phase for the past 25 years. As a result, winters have usually been mild since the late Eighties, encouraging one climatologist to predict an end to winter snow in Britain.
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What about global warming? Doesn’t this all make those theories about warming look a bit stupid? Well, no. The NAO is only cooling a small area round northern Europe.