Sky Writers
This astrophysicist in Boulder, Colorado first noticed that airplane contrails spread to look like cirrus clouds, making human atmospheric impact 'visible to the discerning naked eye.'
Who is Walter Orr Roberts?
This remote Antarctic station, supplied once a year by train of vehicles, was the source of the most important ice core data, funded by Russian-American cooperation despite Cold War tensions.
What is Soviet Vostok Station?
In 1976, Business Week explained both sides of climate science, saying the 'dominant school' maintains that this gas 'may be the world's biggest environmental problem.'
What is CO2 (carbon dioxide)?
Scientists worried that supersonic planes might alter this layer of atmosphere 'as severely as a volcanic eruption.'
What is the stratosphere?
In 1963, Roberts predicted contrails would do this by mid-afternoon, and when it happened exactly as predicted, he realized humans were rewriting the sky.
What is spread and thin until you can't tell them from cirrus clouds?
The Vostok ice core revealed that CO2 levels in the atmosphere had been lower during glacial periods than during these periods, showing a clear connection between CO2 and temperature.
What are warm periods (interglacials)?
This prestigious scientific body was asked to study whether GCMs were trustworthy, appointing a panel led by veteran weather modeler Jule Charney.
What is the National Academy of Sciences?
This brilliant Danish scientist figured out in 1954 that ice cores could measure ancient temperatures using oxygen isotopes.
Who is Willi Dansgaard?
This University of Wisconsin meteorologist flying over India was struck by the fact that he could not see the ground due to this, not clouds.
What is dust (and who is Reid Bryson)?
This solar physicist became famous in 1976 for tying together all the threads about ice ages, despite being ignorant of radiocarbon research and having poor communication with other climate fields.
Who is John (Jack) Eddy?
The Charney panel concluded that if CO2 doubled, Earth would warm by about this temperature range, which they called 'rather high confidence.'
What is 3°C, plus or minus 1.5°C (or 1.5°–4.5°C)?
The Deep Sea Drilling Project, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, pulled up these cores from ocean floors around the world to study ancient climate.
What are sediment cores (from seabed clay)?
Bryson realized the global haze wasn't natural but came from these three human activities that were reaching planetary scale.
What are slash-and-burn farming, overgrazing turning pastures to desert, and industrial pollution?
The 'Little Ice Age' of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries coincided with this solar phenomenon, leading scientists to investigate connections between solar variations and climate.
What is few sunspots (or the sunspot minimum)?
This 1977 headline warned that catastrophic warming might be unstoppable, while Science magazine summed up the report saying 'No Fault' could be found with the models.
What is 'Fear Heavy Use of Coal May Bring Adverse Shift in Climate' (or the New York Times headline)?
The ice core analysis revealed that CO2 levels were trapped in these tiny structures, allowing scientists to measure ancient atmospheric composition.
What are air bubbles?
According to the text, Bryson suspected these atmospheric effects might block enough of this to affect climate globally.
What is Sunlight?
This 1975 meteorologist concluded that solar influences on weather were unlikely and that there was 'no reasonable mechanism in sight' except perhaps this cosmic phenomenon affecting cloud formation.
Who is Robert Dickinson (and what are cosmic rays)?
This international research program, formed by the WMO and ICSU, was designed to study global climate change and became a key coordinating body for climate research in the late 1970s.
What is GARP (Global Atmospheric Research Program)?
When Should Scientists Speak Up
No Wrong Answer :)