Winter ... Cold Winter?

Note: first link is to Weekly Standard, bastion of neo-cons, owned by Rupert Murdock.
But interesting thread, esp. as I tend to question "conventional wisdom".

The Weekly Standard: "January Was Wicked Cold"

"This is yet one more indication of the intensity of planet-wide cooler temperatures seen in January 2008, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, which has seen record amounts of snow coverage extent as well as new record low surface temperatures in many places.

Which has had the not surprising effect of restoring much of the sea ice lost last summer. The CBC reports:

Satellite images are showing that the cold spell is helping the sea ice expand in coverage by about 2 million square kilometres, compared to the average winter coverage in the previous three years.

It's nice to know that the ice is recovering," Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, told CBC News on Thursday.
"That means that maybe the perennial ice would not go down as low as last year."

The above led me to:
GISS Land-Ocean Index dives in Jan08, exceeding drops for UAH and RSS satellite data: Watts Up With That?: see discussion

Is the sun quieter?
Seems so, few sunspots (almost none)
While we are at a normal minimum between cycles (23 and 24) there are questions about when/if they will trend up.

Previous, extended, quiet periods have been long cold spells (Maunder/Dalton)
Will it happen again?

Dalton Minimum Returns:
"James A. Marusek, a Nuclear Physicist and Engineer, has written and interesting paper on solar variability and the climate impacts. You can see the past cool and warm periods in the graph below. Are we past the maxima in 2000 and now on the down slope leading to more cooling? The sun remains quiet and the longer that quiet persists, the increased probability we will have more global cooling."

Only time will tell
Meanwhile, data can be found here: Data @ NASA GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: Graphs
Last update about a month ago, so too early to tell.