Very warm. In fact probably record-breakingly warm. This will likely come as something of a surprise to anyone reading this from Northern Europe in Winter 2010/11, but the evidence that global temperatures are among the highest on record is actually very good. .

There are three principal independent organisations out there compiling the large amounts of data needed to make a sensible estimate of global average surface temperatures. These are:
• the UK Met Office and Climatic Research Unit (CRU), who jointly produce a series;
• the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US, and
• the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) also in the US. Although each of these use more or less the same data in their analyses, they have slightly different ways of compiling it to produce a global average trend.

The key point here is the three series are in good agreement with each other, all saying that 2010 is one of the two warmest years on record (a record that goes back to 1850 or 1880 depending on the series)- and that the globe is definitely getting warmer. NASA and NOAA have 2010 as the joint warmest year on record with 2005, while the Met Office analysis shows the year came a close second to 1998. The difference between first and second place for 2010 is down to variations in the way the three organisations analyse their data- for example, NASA GISS extrapolate temperatures from nearby data points across areas like the Arctic where there are few or no thermometers, while the Met Office/ CRU leaves those regions blank.

So- the climate continues to change, and the implications for the NHS- in terms of the likely effects on human health, and in terms of the urgent need to reduce energy use and carbon emissions- are still very much current. See
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2011/2010-global-temperature for the latest UK Met Office analysis,
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/ for NOAA, and http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ for the NASA/ GISS analysis.