History of Climate Change Science
The study of our atmosphere, and our understanding of climate change, is a process that has spanned hundreds of years, growing more complex and detailed as time has passed. Our current understanding is based on the work of thousands of researchers and scientists, each contributing the next step in our analysis of everything that makes up our atmosphere.
The first step in modern climate science began in 1824, with Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier. He identified that our planet, without an atmosphere, would get very cold as soon as the sun sets. He identified the principle in which the planet retains and emits heat, which he called the greenhouse effect. Yes, that is exactly why we call the gasses that warm the atmosphere greenhouse gasses (GHGs)!
In 1896, Svante Arrhenius made the next crucial step, when he identified the connections between burning coal, increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, and a warmer climate across the planet. This connection was confirmed in 1938 by George Calendar, who utilized existing records of CO2 within the atmosphere to show that there was an increase occurring over time.
By 1958, further necessity for better atmospheric prompted the observatory at Mauna Loa to begin collecting atmospheric concentrations daily, which continues to this day (Mauna Loa). This has allowed us not only to see the visible trend in CO2 concentration, but also allows us to see things like the “breathing” of the Earth that occurs each year, caused by the growth of plants (NASA).
As data and resources improved, increasingly complex tools and techniques were used to measure and analyze the atmosphere. In the 1960s, the first computer models were created, which showed that an increase in CO2 would lead to an increase in global temperatures. At the same time, in 1966, ice cores (and even the ocean floor!) were first used to understand historic climates in atmospheric compositions. While not as easy to measure as the modern atmosphere, these sources allow us to look further back into Earth’s atmospheric history.
By the 1980s models were becoming more complex, and the IPCC was first formed. The IPCC is responsible for taking all of our knowledge about climate change and the atmosphere and releasing assessments, the latest of which was released in 2022. These assessments take years of work and hundreds of scientists from around the world, working constantly to ensure we write down everything we know as succinctly as possible. Succinctly being relative, of course, as the latest assessment is still hundreds of pages long.
As we entered the 21st century, increases in computing power allowed models to give more detailed projections and give us a greater understanding of how the atmosphere works. By 2003, we had a large enough handle on the effects of climate change to first attribute a single event to climate change, the 2003 European Heatwave. Since this time, a growing field within climate science has been to study major events to understand how our changing atmosphere is affecting these events and their impacts.
By 2010, the latest major redesign in climate models was developed, known as Earth System Models. These models are increasingly complex, connecting hundreds of elements across the planet, at more detailed resolutions than ever before.
The latest IPCC report followed the trends of the previous reports, and stated that the climate was changing, and that manmade emissions were responsible. You may note that for the last several decades, the focus of research has been on individual events and providing more detail into what climate change means in the future. This is because we know, indisputably, that climate change is occurring. Scientists are not divided on this core fact, and the focus has been on ensuring that we know how much it will change, what it will mean across time and space, and how we can communicate with decisionmakers to ensure that we minimize both this change and the pain it causes as quickly as possible.