Published: April 20, 1982
A relatively tiny but persistent decrease in the amount of solar energy reaching the earth’s surface in 1980 and 1981 may have helped cause this year’s unusually severe winter, a senior scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology suggested yesterday.
A device aboard the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s orbiting Solar Maximum Mission satellite, launched in February 1980, found that over an 18-month period ended in August 1981, the average amount of energy from the sun decreased by one-tenth of 1 percent, according to Dr. Richard C. Willson, a physicist who designed and coordinated the experiment.
NASA scientists are much smarter now, and know that cold winters are caused by an overheated Arctic.
JPL still shows signs if intelligence from time to time.