It's amazing that this should even be considered "news." I have been saying this same thing ever since leftists started the whole "global warming" nonsense in the '90s. 25 years ago, my college physics project involved correlating droughts on Earth to sunspot activity and showing how they went together in predictable cycles. Everyone who keeps up with astronomy at all knows that the Sun has been going through an extremely active, violent cycle recently that affects Earth's weather, and that it will settle down as soon as George W. Bush is no longer president. His departure will please the sun god Ra, star of crossword puzzles worldwide, then everything will be hunky-dory again.
RA was killed by the SGC..
It's also well known that El Nino correlates with sun spots, etc.