Global warming is arguably the defining scientific issue of modern times, but it is not widely appreciated that the foundations of our understanding were laid almost two centuries ago. Now David Archer and Ray Pierrehumbert present The Warming Papers, a collection of classic scientific papers that constitute the foundation of the global warming forecast.
"We chose seminal papers, the first ones to explore big ideas, rather than the most recent or most current paper on the topic," Dr. David Archer. "We limited papers to those concerning global warming—a human impact on climate, in particular—rather than climate science more broadly."
The sensitivity of climate to changes in atmospheric CO2 was first estimated about one century ago, and the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration was discovered half a century ago. The fundamentals of the science underlying the forecast for human-induced climate change were being published and debated long before the issue rose to public prominence in the last few decades.
The Warming Papers is a compendium of the classic scientific papers that constitute the foundation of the global warming forecast. The paper trail ranges from Fourier and Arrhenius in the 19th Century to Manabe and Hansen in modern times. Archer and Pierrehumbert provide introductions and commentary which places the papers in their context and provide students with tools to develop and extend their understanding of the subject.
The book captures the excitement and the uncertainty that always exists at the cutting edge of research, and is invaluable reading for students of climate science, scientists, historians of science, and others interested in climate change.