Available literature demonstrates that, although early climate change science has its roots in the early 1800s, it has nevertheless continued to influence modern-day thinking on climate change and related concepts, including the greenhouse effect and global warming (Nierenberg, Tschinkel & Tschinkel 319).
The present paper traces the contributions of early scientists such as Joseph Fourier, John Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius in early climate change science.
In 1827, Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) published an article that continues to receive widespread attention from academics and practitioners as the first reference in the literature to mention the atmospheric ‘greenhouse effect’. As demonstrated in the literature, Fourier was among the first scientists “to compare the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere to the action of glass in a greenhouse” (Fleming 72).
Earlier in 1924, Fourier had presented yet another paper on the temperature of the Earth and interplanetary space, concluding that the heating of the Earth was through three distinctive sources namely “(1) solar radiation, which is unequally distributed over the year and which produces the diversity of climates, (2) the temperature communicated by interplanetary space irradiated by the light from innumerable stars, and (3) heat from the interior of the Earth remaining from its formation” (Fleming 72).
These seminal scientific breakthroughs influenced the works of other early scientists such as CSM Pouillet and John Tyndall.
A description and analysis of early climate change science are incomplete without the mention of John Tyndall’s 1861 essay titled “On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapors.”
Following Fourier, Tyndall was convinced that the interception of terrestrial rays by the atmospheric objects exercises the most substantial influence on climate (Fleming 74) and that shifts in the quantity of radioactively active gases in the atmosphere could have generated all the transmutations of climate which geological researchers revealed (Nierenberg et al. 321).
These assertions and experimental observations led the scientist to believe that carbon dioxide and other insignificant mixtures of hydrocarbon vapors could be the causative agents for the noted climatic changes.
Today, scientists have developed the necessary tools and instruments to demonstrate that the release of carbon dioxide into the environment is largely to blame for perpetuating the greenhouse effect and subsequently enhancing global warming (Nierenberg 319).
In his 1896 article titled “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground”, another scientist known as Svante Arrhenius used Fourier’s work to project an orientation that “the atmosphere acts like the glass of a hot-house, because it lets through the light rays of the Sun but retains the dark rays from the ground” (Fleming 74).
Arrhenius used available background information from Fourier not only to develop a theoretical framework that attempted to explain the ice ages and other natural shifts in paleoclimate but also to quantitatively compute how shifts in the amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could alter the temperatures experienced on the surface through the now popularly known greenhouse effect.
It is indeed interesting to note that Arrhenius was the first scientist to forecast that emissions of carbon dioxide generated from the burning of fossil fuels and similar combustion procedures had the capacity to trigger global warming, particularly due to the shifts in water vapor as well as other latitudinal effects (Nierenberg et al. 319-320).
Overall, it is evident that the theorizations of these researchers have influenced much of the scientific studies on climate change done during the 1960s and the 1970s. Today, it is evidently clear that the warming effect of carbon dioxide as originally envisioned by Joseph Fourier is largely to blame for global warming.
Works Cited
Fleming, James R. “Joseph Fourier, the Greenhouse Effect and the Quest for a Universal Theory of Terrestrial Temperatures.” Endeavor. 23.1 (2000): 72-75. Academic Search Premier. Web.
Nierenberg, Nicholas, Walter R. Tschinkel and Victoria Tschinkel. “Early Climate Change Consensus at the National Academy: The Origins and Making of Changing Climate.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences. 40.3 (2010): 318-349. Academic Search Premier. Web.