The Earliest History of Climate Change Science

Climate change is happening for a number of different reasons, but the main culprit is Greenhouse Gases like carbon dioxide, emitted from the burning of fossil fuels like coil and oil. Greenhouse gases happens when the sun shoots solar radiation towards Earth as visible light and these solar rays can easily pass through the gases in our atmosphere, The Earth absorbs some of these rays, heats up, and then emits them as thermal radiation or heat. This radiation however can be absorbed by certain gases in our atmosphere. So, some of this heat goes back down towards Earth and warms it. This forms a greenhouse-like heat trapping barrier around Earth. The more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the more heat is trapped. 

Since the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide level have risen more than 38% and their constant desire for more and more land has caused us to chop down and burn huge amounts of carbon absorbing forests. A forest is considered to be a carbon source if it releases more carbon than it absorbs. Forest carbon is released when trees burn or when they decay after dying. 

Joseph Fourier ; Source : Wikipedia

The first person to theorize something like the greenhouse effect was Joseph Fourier. This clever Frenchman was trying to figure why the Earth wasn't a frozen wasteland. He calculated how much energy the Sun bombard the Earth with and realized that our planet should be much colder than actually is. Something must be trapping Sun's heat. In an 1824 paper he hypothesized "heat in the state of light finds less resistance in penetrating the air, than in re-passing into the air when converted into non-luminous heat". It was made by a person old enough to have been friends with Napoleon.

Source : Slideshare

Eunice Newton Foote ; Source: Wikipedia

Fourier never actually used the term greenhouse. He didn't even conduct an experiment to test his hypothesis or pinpoint which gas could cause this effect. The one who tested the hypothesis was Eunice Newton Foote. Foote was a woman, who in the eyes of 19th century scientists, her opinion was not taken seriously due to her gender. Nonetheless, she did enjoy science and had a curious mind, which made she conducted her own science experiment. Eunice wanted to know how gases interacted with sunlight. She placed thermometers inside of glass cylinders and added different gases and gas and varying amounts of moisture using an air pump. She then placed the cylinders in the sun to measure the temperature difference overtime. She tested gases such as water vapor, common air, and CO2. She noticed that the cylinder filled with carbon dioxide heated quicker and remained hot longer. 

Eunice Foote; Source : Wikipedia

From this she speculated that "An atmosphere of CO2 would give our Earth a high temperature; and if as some suppose, at one period of its history the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present, an increased temperature, must have necessarily resulted". Her paper was presented by a male scientist on her behalf at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1856. It was published the same year in the American Journal of Arts and Science titled 'Circumstances affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays'.

Source : Outrider.org

Foote had built upon Fourier's idea, but she actually tested it and discovered CO2 was one of the greenhouse gases that trap heat in our atmosphere. She correctly hypothesised that changing the levels of CO2 would change the Earth's temperature, which made the foundation for modern climate science. However, no one paid attention to her work, no one saw how significant of a hypothesis this was. Eunice became a footnote in Climate History. 

Instead, the credit of the discovery of greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases was given to Irish scientist John Tyndall. Tyndall was obsessed with The Ice Age theory. It had recently been discovered that large parts of the Earth were once covered with ice and scientists were fascinated with answering what had caused the ice ages. They were a few theories floating about on what could have causes the ice age. Tyndall, like Fourier and Foote thought the atmosphere could be responsible. To test whether gases could trap heat, Tyndall built an experiment which is much simpler than it looks.

Tyndall's experiment on greenhouse gases ; Source : EcoJesuit

John Tyndall had perfectly described the greenhouse effect. Which is why he is normally credited with the discovery. His experiment revealed what Foote had discovered 3 years before. But in Tyndall's later writings, he claims "With regard to the action of other gases upon heat, we are not so far as i am aware, possessed of a single experiment". One could argue the Tyndall must have seen Foote's work. 

This was 150 years ago, who know what Eunice could have achieved if she had Tyndall's advantages. The final piece of the climate change puzzle was solved by Thunberg Arrhenius in 1896 who was the first person that predicted that human industry could severely affect the climate. Thunberg Arrhenius is related to Greta Thunberg who won the nobel prize recently for increasing awareness on climate change.

Below you can watch a video uploaded on YouTube by Meg Rosenburg on the history of Climate Change Science

References 

1) https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/09/21/the-past-present-and-future-of-climate-change
2) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48057733
3) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160932799012107?via%3Dihub
4) https://archive.org/stream/mobot31753002152491#page/381/mode/2up