January 2012 was the globe’s 19th warmest on record, according to NOAA, which is pretty much what one would expect given the prolonged La Niña conditions dominating the tropical Pacific and the fact that we’re still climbing out of the last solar minimum. The characterization could be made that despite the cooling being exerted, the globe still ended up being warmer than more than 110 other January’s!
It is useful to keep in mind when reading about these type of circumstances that there are multiple signals occurring at the same time (solar, ENSO, AGW, etc.) and the state of global temperature (or any other variable) at any one point in time is but a snapshot within larger trends.
