Climate Change - Early steps in Climate Science


1800-1870 

Level of carbon dioxide gas (CO2) in the atmosphere, as later measured in ancient ice, was about 290 ppm (parts per million).


Global temperature for 1850-1870 was about 13.6°C.

1824
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier calculated that the Earth would be far colder if it lacked an atmosphere. 



1856

Eunice Foote describes filling glass jars with water vapour, carbon dioxide and air, and comparing how much they heated up in the sun.
“The highest effect of the sun’s rays I have found to be in carbonic acid gas,” 
 “The receiver containing the gas became itself much heated – very sensibly more so than the other – and on being removed, it was many times as long in cooling.”
1859
John Tyndall discovered that some gases block infra-red radiation. 


He suggested that changes in the concentration of the gases could bring climate change.





1930s 
Milutin Milankovitch proposed orbital changes as the cause of ice ages. 

1938 
Guy Callendar showed that global warming was underway, reviving interest in the question. 


1950s 
By accident, Russell Coope discovered that some past climate change events happened in just a few decades.


This came from his research into beetle fossils in 'Ice Age' layers.

1958 
Telescope studies showed a greenhouse effect raises temperature of the atmosphere of Venus far above the boiling point of water. 


1960 

Charles David Keeling accurately measured CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere.

He was not expecting to detect an annual rise.

The CO2 level was 315 parts per million (ppm)and global temperature (five-year average) was 13.9°C.

Keeling's measurements have been continued.



By the end of 2015 the level was over 400 ppm.

Global temperature in 2015 was 14.80°C.

Popular posts from this blog

Climate Change - The link with mass extinctions

Image
What is the worst-case scenario for climate change? The geological record shows that when the atmosphere suddenly changes, there are big effects on living things. Five major  mass extinction  events are recorded in the rock record of the last 600 million years. The biggest extinction was at the end of the  Permian , around 252 million years ago. It is called the  End-Permian mass extinction. Only about 8% of species survived to live on in the Triassic Period. This photo shows geologists investigating tilted sedimentary rocks at Shangsi in South China. Triassic rocks (at the top right) lie over the older Permian rocks. Each mass extinction in the rocks matches with a change in the chemistry of the rocks called a ' carbon excursion '. Some of the carbon excursions are 'negative CEs' and some are 'positive CEs'. Negative CEs  indicate that lots of gaseous carbon compounds escaped into the air, causing warming. These are sometime...
Read more

Climate Change - The Greenhouse Effect

Image
What do scientists mean by the " Greenhouse Effect "? When the Sun's energy arrives at the Earth, it travels through the air. Some is reflected back to space, but some hits the Earth and warms it. The warm Earth gives off  infrared radiation  with various wavelengths.   Some of those waves can pass back out of the air to space, but some are absorbed by certain gases in the air. The gases then re-emit the energy into the air. If there are more of those gases, less heat escapes into space. An extreme case has happened on Venus. Concentrated  'greenhouse gases'  on Venus have caused the surface temperature to rise to 735  Kelvin  (462 degrees C; around 900 degrees F) Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen quickly  since people began burning large quantities of fossil fuels. There was carbon dioxide in the air before that, at around 270 parts per million. Without any carbon dioxide, the Earth wo...
Read more

Climate Change - Coal and carbon dioxide

Image
Coal, oil and natural gas are  fossil fuels . When they are burned, they  change the Earth's atmosphere. How is that possible?       C oal  is a good example. Coal was formed  hundreds of millions of years ago . Geologists say that a three-metre (10-foot) coal seam took between  12,000 and 60,000 years  to form . Ancient trees and other plants lived, died and were fossilised. All those plants took  carbon dioxide  out of the atmosphere.  Some larger coal seams are, for example, 10 metres thick. They took around  40,000 years to form,  but have been mined and burned in a little over  100 years. The fastest rise of CO 2  in the air seen in   the ice core record (800,000 years)  is  20 ppm in 1000 years. The CO 2  level in the atmosphere is now rising at around  20 ppm per decade . The  carbon  joins up with  oxygen  when it burns. Eac...
Read more