Spacecraft Measurements Indicate Shifting Interstellar Wind
Weather on Earth might be shifting in part because of human activity, but larger context in which the Earth moves has some trends to deal with as well, according to new research published in Science and summarized by Science Now: "As Earth and the other planets orbit the sun, the solar system itself travels through space. Its slow journey is taking it though a wispy expanse of gas called the Local Interstellar Cloud. Now, astronomers have discovered signs of potential turbulence in the cloud, indicated by a shift in direction of helium atoms that flow into the solar system. If the shift is real and continues for hundreds to thousands of years—a dicey extrapolation—it could be a harbinger of more dramatic changes in our solar system, notes study co-author David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. ... To detect the wind shift, researchers drew on measurements by 11 spacecraft and satellites that have recorded directly or indirectly the flow of helium atoms into the solar system. Many kinds of atoms infiltrate the heliosphere, but helium is a particularly good tracer for all of them because it is abundant and typically survives in its uncharged, atomic state all the way to Earth’s orbit, [study co-author Priscilla] Frisch says."
Note that the quoted article says absolutely nothing about "weather on Earth". It's talking about "dramatic changes in our solar system", i.e. a distortion in the shape of the termination shock, which lies 75 to 90 AU away from the sun. That is an effective boundary between the heliosphere and the ISM, where the solar wind and the interstellar wind are equally dominant.
Neptune orbits at 30 AU, but the "solar system" is understood to extend at least to the Oort cloud, 50000 AU distant. Earth orbits at 1 AU which is well inside the heliosphere, where the solar wind is much more important. That's why these spacecraft have to look at neutral helium atoms, which are the only interstellar wind components that can actually make it down here without being deflected by solar magnetic fields. Outside the solar system they have a rough density of about ten helium atoms per mL.
This has much less influence on the Earth's climate than the "sunspot activity" referred to by politicians, but you can expect to hear a lot of crap soon, e.g. "Weather on Earth might be shifting in part because of human activity, but larger context in which the Earth moves has some trends to deal with as well".