The cold air across Scandinavia still won’t relinquish its hold in early January, and we are left with a topsy-turvy anomaly chart, with a belt of warm anomalous air extending from the Atlantic, northeastward across Iceland and into the Arctic Ocean. Either side of this belt of very mild air, across northern Europe and Greenland, anomalies are as low as -17°C in Finland, and -22°C in western Russia. The paradox is that globally, temperatures are still at record high levels never seen before, well at least since 1850 when records started.