Another researcher, Samuel Pierpont Langley, had also recently invented a highly precise thermal detector that he used to measure how much energy the atmosphere allows through , and inhibits from leaving. It was a grind. Remarkably, that analysis holds up pretty well today, even in an age where climate analysis involves far more information and variables and are crunched by cloud supercomputers.
The era of modern climate modeling was born. Nonetheless, Arrhenius and his peers did not actually worry about global warming, or fret about industrialization cooking the planet. Certainly, the industrial revolution was well underway, burning oodles of coal. When it came to disaster, he and his peers were rather more concerned by the possibility of volcanic eruptions disrupting the climate. Only a few years earlier, the island of Krakatoa had exploded in a volcanic fury, dumping so much sulphur dioxide into the sky that it cooled the Northern hemisphere for over a year and killed thousands.
They understood that the lethal danger of sudden climate change. Actually, Arrhenius thought a warmer world would have big upsides. We often hear lamentations that the coal stored up in the earth is wasted by the present generation without any thought of the future, and we are terrified by the awful destruction of life and property which has followed the volcanic eruptions of our days. We may find a kind of consolation in the consideration that here, as in every other case, there is good mixed with the evil.
By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind. It was a nice idea at the time—but nature, as is now dangerously clear, had different ideas. But the science predicting that it would occur? JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students.
John Tyndall's setup for measuring radiant heat absorption by gases. By: Clive Thompson. December 17, December 17, Share Tweet Email Print.
How long have we known that human-driven climate change could be a catastrophe? Meanwhile striking news came from studies of ancient climates recorded in Antarctic ice cores. For hundreds of thousands of years, carbon dioxide and temperature had been linked: anything that caused one of the pair to rise or fall had caused a rise or fall in the other.
By this Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC managed to establish a consensus, phrased so cautiously that scarcely any expert or government representative dissented. They announced that although the climate system was so complex that scientists would never reach complete certainty, it was much more likely than not that our civilization faced severe global warming.
At that point the discovery of global warming was essentially completed. Scientists knew the most important things about how the climate could change during the 21st century. How the climate would actually change now depended chiefly on what policies humanity would choose for its greenhouse gas emissions.
Since , greatly improved computer models and an abundance of data of many kinds strengthened the conclusion that human emissions are very likely to cause serious climate change. Specialists meanwhile improved their understanding of some less probable but more severe possibilities. On the one hand, a dangerous change in ocean circulation seemed unlikely in the next century or two. On the other hand, there were signs that disintegrating ice sheets could raise sea levels faster than most scientists had expected.
Worse, new evidence suggested that the warming was itself starting to cause changes that would generate still more warming. In the IPCC reported that scientists were more confident than ever that humans were changing the climate. Although only a small fraction of the predicted warming had happened so far, effects were already becoming visible in some regions — more deadly heat waves, stronger floods and droughts, heatrelated changes in the ranges and behavior of sensitive species. But the scientists had not been able to narrow the range of possibilities.
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Create Account See Subscription Options. Research showed that the ocean could never be the complete sink for all atmospheric CO 2. It is thought that only nearly a third of anthropogenic CO 2 is absorbed by oceans. In the late 's and early 's Charles Keeling used the most modern technologies available to produce concentration curves for atmospheric CO 2 in Antarctica and Mauna Loa.
These curves have become one of the major icons of global warming. The curves showed a downward trend of global annual temperature from the 's to the 's.
At the same time ocean sediment research showed that there had been no less than 32 cold-warm cycles in the last 2,5 million years, rather than only 4. Therefore, fear began to develop that a new ice age might be near. The media and many scientists ignored scientific data of the 's and 's in favor of global cooling. In the 's, finally, the global annual mean temperature curve started to rise. People began to question the theory of an upcoming new ice age.
In the late 's the curve began to increase so steeply that the global warming theory began to win terrain fast. Environmental NGO's Non-Governmental Organizations started to advocate global environmental protection to prevent further global warming. The press also gained an interest in global warming. It soon became a hot news topic that was repeated on a global scale. Pictures of smoke stags were put next to pictures of melting ice caps and flood events. A complete media circus evolved that convinced many people we are on the edge of a significant climate change that has many negative impacts on our world today.
Stephen Schneider had first predicted global warming in This made him one of the world's leading global warming experts. In many scientific fields, especially climate science, more women than ever are making important contributions to knowledge and its communication. Many women around the world understand the need to care for all that sustains us. And to honor those who came before, whose insight and ability ought not to have been ignored.
We also promise to include her work in future writing about climate science history. What can we help you find?
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