氣候變遷研究之父The father of climate change

via : guardian.co.uk.

Svante Arrhenius先生是瑞典化學家,　並且是瑞典第一位榮獲諾貝爾獎的瑞典人.　在十九世紀末(1896年)根據研究對世人注意二氧化碳排放對地球生態的危險性 ,　斯人已遠,　令人肅然起敬!

Svante Arrhenius developed a theory to explain the ice ages, and first speculated that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect ("On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground", Philosophical Magazine 1896(41): 237-76). He was influenced by the work of others, including Joseph Fourier. Arrhenius used the infrared observations of the moon by Frank Washington Very and Samuel Pierpont Langley at the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh to calculate the absorption of CO2 and water vapour. Arrhenius' painstaking calculations were later shown to be erroneous. Using 'Stefan's law' (better known as the Stefan Boltzmann law), he formulated his greenhouse law. In its original form, Arrhenius' greenhouse law reads as follows:

At the end of the 19th century, building 92E was the home and laboratory of Svante Arrhenius, a chemist who became Sweden's first Nobel prizewinner. He was destined to have a bigger impact than he could have imagined, far beyond his mainstream work. Unwittingly, he uncovered secrets of the Earth's atmosphere and in doing so triggered research into what many see as the biggest threat to modern humans. He is arguably the father of climate change science

Arrhenius became interested in a debate occupying the scientific community, namely the cause of the ice ages. Could it be, he wondered, that vast swings in the levels of atmospheric CO2, lasting tens of millions of years, were the trigger?

1938, nine years after Arrhenius had died a Nobel prizewinner for his work on ionic solutions, English engineer Guy Callendar gave the greenhouse theory a boost. An expert on steam technology, he took up meteorology as a sideline and became interested in suggestions of a warming trend. Callendar pieced together temperature measurements from the 19th century onwards and saw an appreciable rise. He went on to check CO2 over the same period and discovered levels had increased about 10% in 100 years. The warming was probably due to the higher levels of CO2