Historical Progression of Climate Science

 1856 (American, Eunice Foote) Prior to this year it was only theorized that some element in the air was responsible for keeping the earth warm.  As an amateur scientist Eunice Foote placed glass tubes filled with different gasses in the sun with thermometers in them. The one with carbon dioxide, (CO2) warmed. She was the first person to note the earth would be warmer if the atmosphere had more CO2 in it. Her work was presented to the AAAS.

1859 (Irishman, John Tyndall) Engineer and Scientist refined Eunice Foote’s work with sophisticated laboratory equipment and is generally given credit with first discovering the radiative properties of greenhouse gasses. It is unknown if he was aware of Eunice’s work.

1896 (Svante Arrhenius) The future Nobel Prize winner spent a winter doing the math needed to prove or disprove the earth would warm or not warm if the CO2 concentrations were increased. He proved we could warm the earth.

NOTE: At this point, the question was no longer if the earth could be warmed with increased CO2 concentrations, but would the additional CO2 added by humans, now called Anthropogenic Carbon, increase the atmospheric concentrations.  Or would the earth’s natural carbon recycler’s pick up the excess CO2 and process it via photosynthesis to sequester the carbon and release oxygen. This recycling is done by terrestrial forests and grasslands as well as phytoplankton in the sea.

1938 (Canadian, Guy Stewart Callendar) Engineer Callendar was curious if the world was warming. (And a lot of other things). He painstakingly accumulated temperature data from around the globe and discovered the earth was warming. He argued with conviction this warming was due to Anthropogenic Carbon emissions trapping infrared radiation. This carbon comes from burning coal, oil, and gas.

1953 (Canadian Gilbert Plass) The Canadian Physicist was the first to make detailed predictions of global warming. Today’s climate has proven him correct.

1958 (American Charles David Keeling) The American Scientist was the first to develop an instrument able to measure atmospheric samples for carbon dioxide concentration consistently and with precision. His instrument was placed high on the slopes of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Volcano. Since 1958 his instrument has measured the rapid increase of CO2 called the Keeling Curve. Also, honorable shout out to Roger Revelle and Al Gore who applied Keeling’s work to their own.

With the Keeling Curve we know the Anthropogenic CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than planet earth can absorb it. Because the World Meteorological Organization accumulates and publishes earth’s temperature data, we know the rise in CO2 is driving the rise in temperature.

Equally intriguing is the march backwards in time to understand the ice ages. Geologists discovered evidence of ice ages but did not know what caused the ice ages. The work of James Kroll, and Milutin Milankovitch, who built their theories on top of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton explained the ice age cycles…almost entirely. Today’s ice core scientists tied it all together and, it is of course, explained by carbon dioxide rise and fall triggered by changes in the earth’s orbit and tilt and wobble. It is another fascinating journey into earth science. But then we can really go back in time via the fossils to unearth more hidden messages from the past and the previous five extinctions.

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