WARMING: Don't buy sunspot theory

In last week’s weather column, Randy Mann was once again erroneously attributing our regional weather patterns to sunspot activity. He wrote that our current solar minimum (the period of reduced sunspot activity that began last year) was largely responsible for last February’s unusually cold and snowy weather.

According to NOAA, temps across the western U.S. and Canada were 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit below normal in February. However, in Europe, Asia and Alaska, temperatures were much warmer than normal, as were most of the world’s oceans. Globally, temperatures were actually 1.42 degrees Fahrenheit above average, making February 2019 the fifth warmest February on record. In other words, Randy’s claim that a “quiet sun” cooled the planet in February is just plain wrong. The Earth is warming without regard to sunspot activity.

Changes in solar irradiance (sunspot activity) used to have a weak influence on surface temperatures. Randy’s error is ignoring the much larger impact that greenhouse gas forcing is now having on our warming temperatures. Why he consistently omits this from his columns, I do not know. We can only hope that he will soon join the rest of us and accept that anthropogenic climate change is happening. The rest is nonsense.

DOUGLAS HARRO

Coeur d’Alene