Researched
Climate models
Syukuro Manabe's computer models (1967) calculated how doubled CO2 warms the atmosphere and became the basis of all climate projections.
Open in the interactive tree →Manabe and Wetherald's one-dimensional model gave about 2.3 °C for doubled CO2; later three-dimensional models couple atmosphere, ocean, ice and land. Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics. Today's model ensembles feed the IPCC reports.
Prerequisites
- Greenhouse effect1896
- Programmable Computer1941The first climate models were simulations that ran on digital computers
- Numerical weather prediction1950
Unlocks
- El Niño-Southern Oscillation1969-1994
- IPCC climate assessments1988
- SWOT Wide-Swath Water Survey2022
- Paris 2015, 1.5 °C breached2024
- Coral reef tipping point2025
- Climate sensitivity rangeopen
- Feeding 10 billion peopleopen
- Predicting tipping pointsopen
- Stopping ocean acidificationopen
- Stopping soil lossopen
- Tipping-point early warning2040s?