Yeah, plummet is like straight down till it hits something. Given it's root is in "plumbum" it's not surprising and yes, this is used incorrectly. Not being prescriptive, but this usage is pretty misleading.
Well now that we've determined that plummet maybe isn't the right word to use, shall we discuss the fact that satellites are unexpectedly falling from the sky in yet another climate change that we had not predicted?
While solar phenomena influences climate, this aspect is not human induced. We have put artificial satellites up there, in earth orbit, but they are not causing solar eruptions or solar flares. We don't understand solar "climate" enough to say that it's changing (cycle frequency, amplitude, etc).
The sun has an 11-year solar cycle where each cycle has a period of low and high sunspot activity and currently we are just starting Cycle 25 with a corresponding uptick of solar flare activity.
