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2011 tied as the eleventh-warmest year in our record. But that doesn’t mean that any
specific area was warmer or cooler than that. The map behind me shows areas that were warmer
than average by red, and areas that were cooler than average by blue. Something that is really
important to note is across the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere were very warm
during 2011. And that’s indicative of a trend that we’ve been seeing across that
region over the past several years. Across northern Europe, where we saw below-average
arctic sea ice for a lot of the year, they had open water, and so that tends to drive
up the land surface temperature. Norway had their warmest year on record, and that’s
directly associated with below-average arctic sea ice in that region. We can see across
the equatorial Pacific where the blue areas, that indicates areas that were cooler than
average, and that is consistent with the La Nina that we saw for several months during
2011. And then we can see across the land areas of western Asia where La Nina was driving
more precipitation, that also caused their temperatures to be cooler than average. Across
other areas that were really dry, such as the southern Plains of the U.S., northern
Mexico, where there is less precipitation the sun’s energy is going to heat the surface,
as opposed to evaporating water, so that tends to drive temperatures up. In those regions
we can see very warm, or much warmer than average conditions for 2011.