John Justice of local wingnut radio station KQTH claimed this morning that solar flares accounted for the recent warm spell in America. Yes, this is another conservative FAIL:
NASA Measures Impact of Huge Solar Flare on Earth's Atmosphere
03.23.12
A key NASA instrument that can directly measure the impact of solar events on the Earth's upper atmosphere has weighed in on the huge flare that impacted Earth last week.
The upper atmosphere heated up, and huge spikes occurred in infrared emission from nitric oxide and carbon dioxide, said Marty Mlynczak, SABER's associate-principal investigator at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
As the Sun becomes more active, Mlynczak said, it emits more ultraviolet radiation and produces more solar flares - coronal mass ejections (CMEs) - which are absorbed in the atmosphere. "More heating results, and the atmosphere gets warmer, and the infrared emission increases," he said.
"We don't know yet how these affect weather or climate -- likely there is not any direct effect," he said, "but there may be, over time, influences on ozone that affect climate."
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