and coincindentially, at least in my area, it's much warmer than the last few weeks. couple days, it was in the 50's. monday is supposed to be in the 60's, then cold again i think.
so once again, it comes down to the sun.
CAP, the sun supplies every watt of power to the planet. It does come down to the sun, but it is magnified by the atmosphere around the planet.
But, again, you are confusing weather with climate.
The solar flux has just barely moved past the lowest part of minima. Today it's at 80.6.
As you can see, the average is much higher. As you can see the sun spends a majority of its' time way above a flux of 100, averaging roughly around 160, and going up into the high 200's.
Tied into Solar Irradiance. (how much energy the earth receives)
If you spend some time thinking about it, you'll realize why people are a bit pessimistic about temperatures, when you're seeing 50's and 60's in January, now. We are way under average solar flux.... but the total irradiance isn't shifting. This means that the energy the sun puts out isn't changing outside of normal parameters observed. But global mean temperature HAS. If the energy average coming into the system doesn't change, but the system does trend in either direction, it's the system that is causing the trend. General lab science.
You should see temp following flux, in short. You don't. You can see the bounce in temperature when the flux is high and low (note the peaks in temp in 1980, 90, 2000, when flux was highest), but the fact remains it trends up in the long term.... This is indicative of a system retaining energy.