I’m not a person who likes winter to begin with, and this winter will have even less for me to like, where I live.

The overall long-term trend in Earth’s climate is toward higher temperatures, as humans continue to pump carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The temperature rise is evident on a scale of decades, but over shorter time periods, natural climate variations can accelerate or hold back the warming in different parts of the world — and one such variation is likely to dominate weather in the U.S. this coming winter.

Notice the dry conditions that are persisting in the southern U.S.  Thanks to La Nina, however,  it might even be colder in the Midwest than last winter, which was very cold in North America.  The problem with interpreting weather events in the winter in North America is that media people tend to think locally.  If it’s cold in their city, they tend to think the entire planet is just as cold.  Of course, that’s ridiculous.  Winter weather can be very cold in one spot, but overall average global temperatures can and do continue to rise.

From Climate Central: It’s La Niña, a periodic cooling of water in the equatorial Pacific that happens about every two to five years. As you can see in this Climate Center video, La Niña’s cooling effect could keep this year — the warmest on record globally so far — from holding onto that title.

It could also lead to a winter of weather extremes that differ from those seen last year. According to a new report issued yesterday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), much of the Pacific coast, the northern parts of North Dakota and Montana, and central Alaska are likely to be cooler and wetter than average, while the South and Southeast are likely to be warmer and drier. This may have major implications for drought conditions, which have emerged in the Southeast and persisted in parts of the Southwest. Historically, La Niña events have been associated with noteworthy droughts in the Southwest.