2010 was a self-contradicting year: On one hand UN's WMO' says that globaly it's the warmest year on recoed, yet Europe has exprienced the next-coldest winter in 150years

Heat-record

The year 2010 ranked as the warmest year on record, together with 2005 and 1998, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Data received by the WMO show no statistically significant difference between global temperatures in 2010, 2005 and 1998.

In 2010, global average temperature was 0.53°Cabove the 1961-90 mean. This value is 0.01°C above the nominal temperature in 2005, and 0.02°Cabove 1998. The difference between the three years is less than the margin of uncertainty (± 0.09°C  in comparing the data.

These statistics are based on data sets maintained by the UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit (HadCRU), the U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Arctic sea-ice cover in December 2010 was the lowest on record, with an average monthly extent of 12 million square kilometres, 1.35 million square kilometres below the 1979-2000 average for December. This follows the third-lowest minimum ice extent recorded in September.

The warm seasons where directly responsible for a several disasters including:

• Floods affected more than 800 000 people in Sri Lanka in January 2010
  
• Flash floods in the mountain in Brazilresulted in more than 700 deaths in January
• Severe flooding occurred in eastern Australia in December and the first half of January,

Coldest winter in Europe in 150years

During the International Polar Year conference, researchers suggested that there are more cold and snowy winters to come. They argue that the exceptionally cold snowy 2009-2010 winter in Europe had a connection with the loss of sea-ice in the Arctic. The cold winters were associated with a persistent ‘blocking event’, bringing in cold air over Europe from the north and the east.

NAO-index for dec-march temperatures since 1850

WHile Europe has a cold Greenland appears to have fever, according to these NOA-mappings for the temperature anomalies in 2010. WShile Europe and Russia experiences colder winters, Greenland and the Beering-pæassage are warmer than usual

Sources:
Heat-record at  UN's World Meteorological Organization
Model of temperature anomalies at  RealClimate.org
Warmin arctic at University of Colorado