Did NASA Director Dr. James Hansen get it right in predicting cold weather this year?

"even averaged over a month, local weather anomalies (dynamical fluctuations, more-or-less independent of forced long-term climate change) are much larger than the global mean temperature change of recent decades. Weather fluctuations or ‘noise’ have a noticeable effect even on monthly-mean global-mean temperature, especially in Northern Hemisphere winter. Weather has little effect on global-mean temperature averaged over several months or more. The primary cause of variations on time scales from a few months to a few years is ocean dynamics, especially the Southern Oscillation (El Nino – La Nina cycle), although an occasional large volcano can have a cooling effect that lasts a few years. The 10-11 year cycle of solar irradiance has a just barely detectable effect on global temperature, no more than about 0.1°C, much less noticeable than El Nino/La Nina fluctuations."

The sun, sunspots, it's all in there if you click on those blue things ("links").

"The solar minimum forcing is thus about 0.15 W/m2 relative to the mean solar forcing. For comparison, the human-made GHG climate forcing is now increasing at a rate of about 0.3 W/m2 per decade (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Hansen_Sa...

"Furthermore, recent sighting of the first sunspot of reversed polarity (http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=04&... and (http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080104_... signifies that the ~ 4-year period of increasing solar irradiance is about to get underway."

"Summary. The Southern Oscillation and the solar cycle have significant effects on yearto-year global temperature change. Because both of these natural effects were in their cool phases in 2007, the unusual warmth of 2007 is all the more notable. It is apparent that there is no letup in the steep global warming trend of the past 30 years"

Looks like a cool forecast is imminent:

"La Nina cooling in the second half of 2007 (Figure 2) is about as intense as the regional cooling associated with any La Nina of the past half century"

"Effect of the current La Nina on global surface temperature is likely to

continue for at least the first several months of 2008."

But then he nails it:

"Competing with the short-term solar and La Nina cooling effects is the long-term global warming effect of human-made GHGs. The latter includes the trend toward less Arctic sea ice that markedly increases high latitude Northern Hemisphere temperatures. Although sea ice cover fluctuates from year to year, the large recent loss of thick multi-year ice implies that this warming effect at high latitudes should persist.

Based on these considerations, it is unlikely that 2008 will be a year with an unusual global temperature change, i.e., it is likely to remain close to the range of (high) values exhibited in 2002-2007."