History of Climate Science
From WikiDemocracy
General Histories and Timelines
Other Greenhouse Gases
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explains how climate science expanded beyond carbon dioxide to include methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, ozone, and water vapor, showing how scientists learned to measure their warming influence.
Aerosols: Volcanoes, Dust, Clouds
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article follows the history of research into particles that cool or warm the planet, including volcanic eruptions, industrial pollution, dust, cloud formation, and the difficulty of measuring aerosol effects.
Venus and Mars
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article shows how planetary science helped climate science, especially as studies of Venus and Mars revealed the power of greenhouse gases and atmospheric composition.
Climate Science as a Profession
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explains how climate science emerged as a professional field, combining meteorology, oceanography, physics, chemistry, geology, biology, computer science, and public policy.
Global Warming Timeline
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This timeline gathers major scientific and political milestones in the history of climate change science, from early ice-age theories and nineteenth-century radiation research to satellite observations, climate models, and international climate assessments.
The Discovery of Global Warming
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This extensive hypertext history explains how scientists gradually discovered the greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide warming, climate feedbacks, computer modeling, ice ages, public debate, and the modern scientific consensus on global warming.
Climate Chronology
| Spencer R. Weart and Stephen H. Schneider Resources | University of Maine | 2024
This chronology gathers historical milestones in climate science and climate policy, providing a broader timeline for the development of global warming research.
Greenhouse Effect and Early Climate Science
The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article traces the scientific history of carbon dioxide as a climate-changing gas, including work by Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius, Callendar, Revelle, Keeling, and later researchers who established the link between fossil fuels and warming.
Basic Radiation Calculations
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explains the history of radiation calculations in climate science, including the mathematical work needed to estimate how greenhouse gases absorb and emit heat.
Carbon Dioxide and Climate
| Roger Revelle and Hans E. Suess | Science | February 1957
This classic paper argued that humanity was conducting a large-scale geophysical experiment by adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through fossil fuel combustion.
The Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean
| Roger Revelle and Hans E. Suess | Tellus | 1957
This paper helped establish the modern understanding that the ocean would not immediately absorb all human-emitted carbon dioxide, making atmospheric accumulation a serious climate issue.
The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change
| Gilbert N. Plass | Tellus | 1956
This landmark paper helped revive the carbon dioxide theory of climate change by using radiation calculations to argue that increased CO2 from fossil fuels could warm the planet.
The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Temperature
| G. S. Callendar | Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society | April 1938
This classic paper argued that rising carbon dioxide from fuel combustion was already warming the Earth, reviving interest in the greenhouse theory after decades of skepticism.
The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Climate
| G. S. Callendar | Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society | 1938
This paper presented one of the first arguments that industrial carbon dioxide emissions were already affecting global temperature.
Climate and Evolution
| Ellsworth Huntington | Yale University Press | 1915
This early twentieth-century work reflects the period when scholars connected climate with human history and evolution, before modern greenhouse science separated itself from older climatic determinism.
On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground
| Svante Arrhenius | Philosophical Magazine | April 1896
This foundational paper calculated how changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide could alter Earth’s temperature, making it one of the earliest quantitative studies of greenhouse warming.
Climate and Time in Their Geological Relations
| James Croll | D. Appleton and Company | 1875
This nineteenth-century book developed an astronomical theory of ice ages and helped prepare the ground for later research on orbital cycles and long-term climate change.
On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours
| John Tyndall | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society | January 1, 1861
This landmark paper reported experiments showing that gases such as water vapor and carbon dioxide absorb heat radiation, providing a physical foundation for later greenhouse-effect science.
Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays
| Eunice Foote | The American Journal of Science and Arts | November 1856
This early experimental paper showed that carbon dioxide absorbs heat and suggested that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide could affect climate, making Foote an important early figure in climate science.
General Remarks on the Temperatures of the Terrestrial Globe and Planetary Spaces
| Joseph Fourier | Annales de Chimie et de Physique | 1827
This early climate-science text argued that Earth is warmer than it would be from sunlight alone, helping establish the idea that the atmosphere influences planetary temperature.
Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment
| Jule G. Charney et al. | National Academy of Sciences | 1979
This National Academy report, often called the Charney Report, helped establish that rising carbon dioxide would produce significant global warming.
The Charney Report
| Jule G. Charney et al. | National Academy of Sciences | 1979
This landmark report assessed the likely warming from doubled carbon dioxide and produced an estimate of climate sensitivity that remains historically important.
Climate Sensitivity: How Scientists Estimate Warming from CO2
| Zeke Hausfather | Carbon Brief | June 19, 2018
This explainer describes the history and methods of estimating climate sensitivity, including models, instrumental records, volcanic evidence, and paleoclimate data.
Eunice Newton Foote
| Leila McNeill | Scientific American | December 5, 2016
This article restores attention to Eunice Foote’s 1856 experiments showing that carbon dioxide traps heat, an important early contribution to greenhouse-effect science.
Carbon Dioxide Monitoring and Carbon Cycle
Global Carbon Project
| Global Carbon Project | Global Carbon Project | 2024
This project page explains the international scientific effort to measure carbon sources and sinks, building on the history of atmospheric CO2 monitoring and carbon-cycle research.
The Origin of the Mauna Loa CO2 Record
| NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory | NOAA | 2024
This NOAA history page explains the background of the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide record and why continuous CO2 measurements became essential to climate science.
Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
| NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory | NOAA | 2024
This NOAA page presents modern atmospheric CO2 trends and connects today’s measurements with the long history of greenhouse-gas monitoring.
OCO-2: Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2
| NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory | NASA | 2024
This mission page explains how NASA measures carbon dioxide from space, extending the history of carbon-cycle observations beyond ground stations such as Mauna Loa.
The History of the Global Carbon Budget
| Global Carbon Project | Global Carbon Project | 2024
This page gathers annual carbon-budget reports and shows how the scientific accounting of carbon emissions evolved into a core tool for climate policy and research.
Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
| Rebecca Lindsey | NOAA Climate.gov | 2024
This NOAA article explains the modern carbon dioxide record, connecting today’s rapid atmospheric CO2 increase with ice-core evidence and the long history of carbon-cycle research.
Global Carbon Budget 2023
| Pierre Friedlingstein et al. | Earth System Science Data | December 5, 2023
This peer-reviewed article presents the annual global carbon budget and shows how modern climate science tracks fossil fuel emissions, land-use change, atmospheric growth, and ocean and land sinks.
Global Carbon Budget 2022
| Pierre Friedlingstein et al. | Earth System Science Data | November 11, 2022
This annual carbon budget article reflects the mature state of carbon-cycle science, combining historical emissions data with atmospheric, land, and ocean observations.
The Beginnings of Research on Carbon Dioxide and Climate
| Scripps Institution of Oceanography | Scripps Institution of Oceanography | April 3, 2013
This article explains the origins of systematic carbon dioxide monitoring and the scientific context that led to the creation of the Keeling Curve.
Charles David Keeling and the Story of Atmospheric CO2 Measurements
| Scripps Institution of Oceanography | Scripps Institution of Oceanography | April 3, 2013
This article tells the story of Keeling’s precise CO2 measurements and explains why continuous atmospheric monitoring became central to climate science.
The Keeling Curve
| Scripps Institution of Oceanography | Scripps Institution of Oceanography | 1958–present
This page presents the long-running Mauna Loa carbon dioxide record begun by Charles David Keeling, one of the most famous observational achievements in climate science.
Money for Keeling: Monitoring CO2 Levels
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explains the history of Charles David Keeling’s carbon dioxide measurements, the Mauna Loa record, funding struggles, and the creation of one of the most important datasets in climate science.
The Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean
| Roger Revelle and Hans E. Suess | Tellus | 1957
This paper helped establish the modern understanding that the ocean would not immediately absorb all human-emitted carbon dioxide, making atmospheric accumulation a serious climate issue.
Paleoclimate, Ice Ages, and Climate Archives
Uses of Radiocarbon Dating
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article describes how radiocarbon dating transformed paleoclimate research by giving scientists a way to date ancient climate events and connect them with changes in oceans, ice, and atmosphere.
Past Climate Cycles and Ice Ages
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article follows the history of ice-age research, orbital theory, Milankovitch cycles, and the evidence that natural climate cycles are shaped by feedbacks involving ice, carbon dioxide, and oceans.
Temperatures from Fossil Shells
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explains how scientists used oxygen isotopes in fossil shells to reconstruct ancient ocean temperatures and build a deeper record of Earth’s climate history.
Rapid Climate Change
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explains how ice cores, ocean sediments, and other evidence revealed that Earth’s climate can shift abruptly, changing earlier assumptions that climate always changes slowly.
Paleoclimatology: The Ice Core Record
| NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information | NOAA | 2023
This NOAA page explains how ice cores preserve ancient air bubbles, dust, isotopes, and volcanic signals, allowing scientists to reconstruct past greenhouse gases and temperatures.
Paleoclimatology: Tree Ring Data
| NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information | NOAA | 2023
This NOAA page explains how tree rings provide historical climate evidence, including annual records of drought, temperature, precipitation, and environmental stress.
Paleoclimatology: Marine Sediment Data
| NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information | NOAA | 2023
This NOAA page explains how ocean sediments preserve fossil, chemical, and isotopic evidence that scientists use to reconstruct climate over thousands to millions of years.
Paleoclimatology: Speleothem Data
| NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information | NOAA | 2023
This page explains how cave formations record past rainfall and temperature changes, adding another archive to the history of paleoclimate science.
How Scientists Reconstruct Past Climates
| NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information | NOAA | 2022
This article explains paleoclimate reconstruction methods and shows how evidence from ice, sediments, fossils, and tree rings helps scientists understand climate before instruments.
How Proxy Data Reveals the Climate of Earth’s Distant Past
| Carbon Brief Staff | Carbon Brief | March 29, 2021
This visual explainer describes how scientists reconstruct ancient climates using tree rings, ice cores, corals, lake sediments, ocean sediments, pollen, and other proxy evidence.
Climate Change: Evidence and Causes
| Royal Society and U.S. National Academy of Sciences | Royal Society | 2020
This overview explains the evidence behind modern climate science and places today’s understanding in the context of long-running research on greenhouse gases, warming, and natural variability.
Early Twentieth-Century Warming: Anomalies, Causes, and Consequences
| Gabriele C. Hegerl et al. | Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change | June 2018
This peer-reviewed article examines the early twentieth-century warming period and explains why historical climate records are important for separating natural variability from human-caused warming.
What a Three-Million-Year Fossil Record Tells Us About Climate Sensitivity
| Roz Pidcock | Carbon Brief | February 4, 2015
This article explains how paleoclimate evidence from fossil marine organisms helps scientists estimate climate sensitivity and compare past carbon dioxide levels with ancient temperatures.
Historical Overview of Climate Change Science
| IPCC Working Group I | IPCC | 2007
This IPCC chapter gives a detailed historical overview of climate science, including early greenhouse theory, climate observations, modeling, attribution, and the development of scientific consensus.
Milankovitch Cycles and Glaciation
| NASA Earth Observatory | NASA | March 24, 2000
This NASA article explains how changes in Earth’s orbit affect long-term climate cycles, an essential part of the history of ice-age theory and paleoclimate science.
Milutin Milankovitch and Orbital Climate Theory
| NASA Earth Observatory | NASA | March 24, 2000
This NASA article explains Milankovitch’s theory that orbital changes pace ice ages, a major link between astronomy, geology, and climate science.
The Vostok Ice Core Record
| NOAA Paleoclimatology | NOAA | 1999
This data page documents the Vostok ice core record, a landmark paleoclimate dataset showing connections among temperature, greenhouse gases, and ice-age cycles.
Climate and Time in Their Geological Relations
| James Croll | D. Appleton and Company | 1875
This nineteenth-century book developed an astronomical theory of ice ages and helped prepare the ground for later research on orbital cycles and long-term climate change.
What Is Paleoclimatology?
| NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information | NOAA | 2024
This NOAA page explains the field of paleoclimatology and the evidence used to reconstruct climate before modern instruments, including ice cores, tree rings, corals, and sediments.
Ice Ages and Climate Dynamics
| NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information | NOAA | 2024
This NOAA paleoclimatology page gives access to the historical climate archives scientists use to reconstruct ice ages, warm periods, abrupt shifts, and long-term climate cycles.
The Geological Evidence of Ice Ages
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | 2024
This article explains the discovery and evidence of ice ages, a crucial step in the history of climate science because it showed that Earth’s climate could change dramatically.
Climate Change
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | 2024
This article explains climate change over geologic and modern time scales, connecting natural climate cycles with the human-driven warming identified by modern science.
Climate and Evolution
| Ellsworth Huntington | Yale University Press | 1915
This early twentieth-century work reflects the period when scholars connected climate with human history and evolution, before modern greenhouse science separated itself from older climatic determinism.
Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays
| Eunice Foote | The American Journal of Science and Arts | November 1856
This early experimental paper showed that carbon dioxide absorbs heat and suggested that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide could affect climate, making Foote an important early figure in climate science.
General Remarks on the Temperatures of the Terrestrial Globe and Planetary Spaces
| Joseph Fourier | Annales de Chimie et de Physique | 1827
This early climate-science text argued that Earth is warmer than it would be from sunlight alone, helping establish the idea that the atmosphere influences planetary temperature.
Models, Satellites, Radiation, and Climate Data
Simple Models of Climate Change
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article describes the early use of simplified climate models to understand radiation balance, feedbacks, and the likely warming effect of rising carbon dioxide.
Chaos in the Atmosphere
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explains how discoveries about chaos, weather prediction, and atmospheric instability shaped climate modeling and clarified the difference between weather forecasts and climate projections.
General Circulation Models of Climate
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article traces the rise of computer climate models, from early numerical weather prediction to global circulation models used to simulate atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice.
Basic Radiation Calculations
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explains the history of radiation calculations in climate science, including the mathematical work needed to estimate how greenhouse gases absorb and emit heat.
Arakawa’s Computation Device
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explains how Akio Arakawa and other modelers improved the numerical methods used in climate models, helping make global simulations more stable and realistic.
Taking a Global Perspective on Earth’s Climate
| NASA | NASA Science | February 6, 2026
This NASA history page explains how NASA’s Earth-observing work developed, including the move toward global climate observations, satellites, and integrated Earth system science.
Landsat: A Long Record of Earth Observation
| NASA and USGS | Landsat Science | 2024
This page explains the Landsat program, whose satellite record since 1972 became a major tool for studying land-use change, glaciers, forests, water, cities, and climate impacts.
Earth Observing System
| NASA | Earth Observing System Project Science Office | 2024
This NASA page describes the Earth Observing System, a major satellite-based research program that helped transform climate science into global Earth system science.
CERES: Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System
| NASA | CERES Science Team | 2024
This NASA mission page explains how CERES instruments measure Earth’s radiation budget, continuing the historical line of climate science that began with radiation and heat-balance studies.
AIRS: Atmospheric Infrared Sounder
| NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory | NASA | 2024
This mission page explains how infrared satellite instruments measure atmospheric temperature, humidity, and greenhouse-gas-related signals, building on the history of atmospheric radiation research.
GRACE and GRACE Follow-On
| NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory | NASA | 2024
This NASA mission page explains how gravity measurements track ice loss, groundwater change, and sea-level contributions, showing how satellite science expanded climate evidence.
PACE: Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem Mission
| NASA | NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group | 2024
This NASA mission page explains how modern climate science studies oceans, clouds, aerosols, and ecosystems together as part of an interconnected Earth system.
The History of the Global Climate Observing System
| Global Climate Observing System | WMO | 2024
This page explains the development of coordinated global climate observations, including the data systems needed to monitor temperature, greenhouse gases, oceans, ice, and land.
The NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory
| NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory | NOAA | 2024
This history page explains the development of NOAA’s atmospheric monitoring work, including greenhouse gases, aerosols, ozone, and long-term measurements central to climate science.
The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment
This NASA mission page explains how satellite measurements of Earth’s radiation budget helped scientists test and improve climate theories about incoming sunlight, reflected energy, and outgoing infrared radiation.
The History of Satellite Meteorology
This NOAA history page explains the development of satellite observations, which transformed weather forecasting and climate monitoring in the second half of the twentieth century.
Climate Reanalyzer and the History of Climate Data
| Climate Change Institute, University of Maine | Climate Change Institute | 2024
This data portal reflects the modern era of climate science in which historical observations, models, and reanalysis systems are used to monitor global climate conditions in near real time.
A History of NASA Climate Modeling
| NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies | NASA GISS | 2024
This NASA page explains the development and purpose of climate modeling at GISS, one of the major institutions in the history of computer-based climate science.
Global Carbon Budget 2023
| Pierre Friedlingstein et al. | Earth System Science Data | December 5, 2023
This peer-reviewed article presents the annual global carbon budget and shows how modern climate science tracks fossil fuel emissions, land-use change, atmospheric growth, and ocean and land sinks.
Global Carbon Budget 2022
| Pierre Friedlingstein et al. | Earth System Science Data | November 11, 2022
This annual carbon budget article reflects the mature state of carbon-cycle science, combining historical emissions data with atmospheric, land, and ocean observations.
Climate Models
| NOAA Climate.gov | NOAA Climate.gov | 2021
This primer explains what climate models are, how they developed from weather and radiation calculations, and how scientists use them to test explanations of past and future climate change.
Explainer: The High-Emissions RCP8.5 Global Warming Scenario
| Zeke Hausfather | Carbon Brief | August 21, 2019
This article explains the history and use of the RCP8.5 emissions scenario, showing how climate modeling language and assumptions shaped modern research and public communication.
Q&A: How Do Climate Models Work?
| Zeke Hausfather | Carbon Brief | January 15, 2018
This explainer describes how climate models developed, what they simulate, how scientists test them, and why modeling became one of the central tools of climate science.
Scientists Discuss How to Improve Climate Models
| Carbon Brief Staff | Carbon Brief | January 15, 2018
This article presents expert discussion of climate model development and the scientific challenges of improving clouds, aerosols, oceans, ice sheets, and regional projections.
Why Clouds Hold the Key to Better Climate Models
| Mark Webb | Carbon Brief | January 15, 2018
This article explains why clouds have been one of the most difficult problems in climate science, from early radiation questions to modern model uncertainty.
The First Climate Model Turns 50
| NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies | NASA GISS | December 2017
This NASA article discusses early climate modeling at GISS and explains how computer models became increasingly important for studying greenhouse warming.
Climate Science Special Report
| U.S. Global Change Research Program | USGCRP | 2017
This U.S. assessment summarizes the physical science basis of climate change and reflects the long development of federal climate research programs.
Explainer: What Climate Models Tell Us About Future Rainfall
| Carbon Brief Staff | Carbon Brief | 2018
This article explains how climate models are used to study precipitation changes, highlighting the growth of model-based climate science from temperature projections to regional impacts.
Timeline: The History of Climate Modelling
| Carbon Brief Staff | Carbon Brief | January 15, 2015
This timeline charts more than fifty milestones in climate modeling, from early weather prediction and radiation calculations to modern Earth system models and supercomputer simulations.
Nimbus Satellites and Earth Observation
| NASA Earth Observatory | NASA | 2014
This article explains how the Nimbus satellite program pioneered Earth observations that later became central to climate science, including weather, radiation, ice, and atmospheric measurements.
Climate Change Detection and Attribution
| IPCC Working Group I | IPCC | 2013
This IPCC chapter explains how scientists determine the causes of observed climate change by comparing greenhouse gases, aerosols, solar variation, volcanoes, and natural variability.
A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming
| Paul N. Edwards | MIT Press | 2010
This book page introduces a major history of climate knowledge infrastructure, showing how weather data, computer models, satellites, and global networks made modern climate science possible.
Earth System Science: A Closer View
| NASA Earth Observatory | NASA | 2004
This NASA article explains Earth system science, the framework that joined atmosphere, ocean, land, ice, biology, and human activity into one integrated approach to climate research.
International Geophysical Year
| NASA History Office | NASA | 2007
This NASA history page explains the International Geophysical Year, a Cold War-era scientific collaboration that helped expand global observations of Earth, atmosphere, oceans, and polar regions.
The International Geophysical Year and Climate Science
| NASA History Office | NASA | 2007
This article explains how the International Geophysical Year promoted international scientific cooperation and helped create the observational foundations for later climate research.
Milankovitch Cycles and Glaciation
| NASA Earth Observatory | NASA | March 24, 2000
This NASA article explains how changes in Earth’s orbit affect long-term climate cycles, an essential part of the history of ice-age theory and paleoclimate science.
The Vostok Ice Core Record
| NOAA Paleoclimatology | NOAA | 1999
This data page documents the Vostok ice core record, a landmark paleoclimate dataset showing connections among temperature, greenhouse gases, and ice-age cycles.
Global Warming, Cold War, and the Evolution of Research Plans
| Spencer R. Weart | Physics Today | January 1997
This article explains how Cold War funding, military interests, atmospheric science, and computer modeling helped shape the research programs that made global warming scientifically visible.
Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action
| U.S. Committee for the Global Atmospheric Research Program | National Academy of Sciences | 1975
This report laid out a research agenda for climate science, emphasizing better data, global monitoring, paleoclimate evidence, and modeling.
The Limits to Growth
| Donella H. Meadows et al. | Club of Rome | 1972
This influential systems-analysis report helped popularize global environmental modeling and shaped the broader intellectual context in which climate science entered public debate.
Restoring the Quality of Our Environment
| President’s Science Advisory Committee | The White House | 1965
This report warned the U.S. government that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels could produce measurable climate change, marking an important early policy moment for climate science.
The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change
| Gilbert N. Plass | Tellus | 1956
This landmark paper helped revive the carbon dioxide theory of climate change by using radiation calculations to argue that increased CO2 from fossil fuels could warm the planet.
Observed Climate Evidence and Earth System Science
Biosphere: How Life Alters Climate
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explores how scientists came to understand forests, soils, plankton, and other living systems as active parts of the climate system through carbon storage, methane production, and feedbacks.
Changing Sun, Changing Climate?
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article reviews the long history of attempts to connect solar variation with climate change, including sunspot cycles, solar radiation measurements, and the eventual conclusion that recent warming cannot be explained by the Sun alone.
Ocean Currents and Climate
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explains how oceanography became central to climate science through research on heat storage, currents, El Niño, carbon uptake, and the ocean’s role in delaying and shaping global warming.
The Modern Temperature Trend
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article traces the development of global temperature records, showing how scientists combined land, ocean, and later satellite data to detect a long-term warming trend.
Ice Sheets, Rising Seas, Floods
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explains how scientists came to understand sea-level rise through research on glaciers, polar ice sheets, thermal expansion, geological records, and coastal vulnerability.
The Evidence for Climate Change
| NASA | NASA Science | October 23, 2024
This NASA overview explains the evidence scientists use to understand climate change, including ancient climate records, modern temperature measurements, shrinking ice sheets, sea-level rise, ocean warming, and increasing carbon dioxide.
Climate Change: Ocean Heat Content
| Rebecca Lindsey and LuAnn Dahlman | NOAA Climate.gov | 2024
This article explains the history and importance of ocean heat measurements, showing why the ocean is one of the clearest indicators of long-term global warming.
Climate Change: Arctic Sea Ice
| Rebecca Lindsey | NOAA Climate.gov | 2024
This article explains how satellite observations transformed understanding of Arctic sea ice decline and made polar change one of the most visible lines of climate evidence.
Climate Change: Global Sea Level
| Rebecca Lindsey | NOAA Climate.gov | 2024
This NOAA article explains how tide gauges, satellites, and ocean measurements created the modern scientific record of global sea-level rise.
Climate Change: Incoming Sunlight
| Rebecca Lindsey | NOAA Climate.gov | 2024
This article explains how scientists study solar variation and why changes in incoming sunlight do not explain the rapid warming observed in recent decades.
Climate Change: Mountain Glaciers
| Rebecca Lindsey | NOAA Climate.gov | 2024
This article explains the long history of glacier observations and how retreating mountain glaciers became an important signal of global climate change.
What Is the Greenhouse Effect?
This NASA explainer describes the greenhouse effect, the physical principle discovered through nineteenth-century radiation research and central to modern climate science.
What Is Climate Change?
This NASA page explains climate change in plain language and connects modern warming with greenhouse gases, long-term observations, and historical climate evidence.
The WMO and the History of Global Climate Monitoring
| World Meteorological Organization | WMO | 2024
This page explains the WMO’s role in international weather and climate observation, an essential part of the infrastructure that made global climate science possible.
State of the Global Climate
| World Meteorological Organization | WMO | March 19, 2024
This WMO report places modern climate indicators in historical context, summarizing temperature, greenhouse gases, ocean heat, sea level, glaciers, sea ice, and extreme events.
The History of the Greenhouse Effect
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | 2024
This article explains the greenhouse effect and its scientific development, including atmospheric heat trapping, carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and the connection to global warming.
Global Warming
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | 2024
This article gives historical and scientific background on global warming, including greenhouse gases, observed temperature trends, climate models, and scientific assessments.
Climate Change and the Ocean
| NOAA National Ocean Service | NOAA | 2024
This NOAA article explains how ocean warming, acidification, currents, and sea-level rise became central parts of climate science.
Ocean Acidification
| NOAA National Ocean Service | NOAA | 2024
This NOAA explainer describes how rising carbon dioxide changes ocean chemistry, an important extension of carbon-cycle science beyond atmospheric warming.
National Climate Assessment
| U.S. Global Change Research Program | USGCRP | November 2023
This assessment shows how climate science evolved into detailed national risk assessment, connecting historical warming evidence with regional impacts across the United States.
Climate Change: Global Temperature
| Rebecca Lindsey | NOAA Climate.gov | 2024
This NOAA article explains how scientists measure global temperature change, why modern warming is historically unusual, and how temperature datasets became central evidence in climate science.
Climate Change Impacts
| NOAA | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | January 2024
This NOAA education resource summarizes observed climate impacts and gives historical context for how scientific evidence moved from temperature trends to real-world consequences.
How Do Scientists Know the Climate Is Changing?
| NOAA Climate.gov | NOAA Climate.gov | 2020
This article explains the multiple lines of evidence behind climate science, including temperature records, sea-level measurements, shrinking ice, phenology, and ocean heat.
Assessments, Institutions, and Scientific Consensus
International Cooperation
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article traces the growth of international climate science through global data networks, conferences, the World Meteorological Organization, the IPCC, and climate treaty negotiations.
Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate Is Warming
| NASA | NASA Science | October 21, 2024
This NASA article summarizes the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change and shows how modern climate science rests on decades of observation, theory, and peer-reviewed research.
World Climate Research Programme
| World Climate Research Programme | WCRP | 2024
This page describes the history of the World Climate Research Programme, a major international effort that helped organize climate modeling, observations, and Earth system research.
U.S. Global Change Research Program History
| U.S. Global Change Research Program | USGCRP | 2024
This page explains the history of coordinated federal climate research in the United States, including the development of assessments, data programs, and interagency science.
AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023
| Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change | IPCC | March 20, 2023
This major IPCC report synthesizes modern climate science and policy knowledge, representing the culmination of more than a century of research into greenhouse gases, warming, impacts, adaptation, and mitigation.
The History of Climate Science and the IPCC
| Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change | IPCC | 2023
This IPCC history page explains the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its role in organizing global climate science assessments since the late twentieth century.
Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis
| IPCC Working Group I | IPCC | August 9, 2021
This IPCC report summarizes the physical science of climate change, including greenhouse forcing, observed warming, paleoclimate evidence, climate sensitivity, models, and future projections.
Paleoclimate Archives and Climate Sensitivity
| IPCC Working Group I | IPCC | 2021
This IPCC chapter uses paleoclimate and historical observations to explain how past climate changes inform modern estimates of climate sensitivity and human influence.
The Earth’s Energy Budget, Climate Feedbacks, and Climate Sensitivity
| IPCC Working Group I | IPCC | 2021
This IPCC chapter summarizes the mature form of radiation-balance science that began with early studies of heat, atmospheric absorption, and greenhouse gases.
Human Influence on the Climate System
| IPCC Working Group I | IPCC | 2021
This IPCC summary states the modern scientific conclusion that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, reflecting the culmination of more than a century of climate research.
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
| Naomi Oreskes | Science | December 3, 2004
This influential essay reviewed scientific abstracts and found that published climate research overwhelmingly accepted the basic reality of human-caused climate change.
Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis
| IPCC Working Group I | IPCC | September 27, 2013
This IPCC assessment summarizes the state of climate science before the Paris Agreement era, including observed warming, carbon budgets, paleoclimate data, sea level, and model projections.
Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis
| IPCC Working Group I | IPCC | 2007
This IPCC report summarized the physical science evidence for climate change and concluded that warming of the climate system was unequivocal.
Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis
| IPCC Working Group I | IPCC | 2001
This IPCC report documents the state of physical climate science at the beginning of the twenty-first century and strengthened the conclusion that human activity was warming the planet.
Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change
| IPCC Working Group I | IPCC | 1995
This IPCC report marked an important turning point by concluding that the balance of evidence suggested a discernible human influence on global climate.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: First Assessment Report
| Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change | IPCC | 1990
This first IPCC assessment marked a turning point in the institutional history of climate science by summarizing evidence for global warming and presenting it to governments around the world.
Climate Change 1990: The IPCC Scientific Assessment
| IPCC Working Group I | IPCC | 1990
This first IPCC scientific assessment organized the evidence on greenhouse gases, climate observations, models, and projected warming for an international policy audience.
Global Change Research Act of 1990
| U.S. Global Change Research Program | USGCRP | 1990
This page explains the law that created a coordinated U.S. global change research program, institutionalizing climate science across federal agencies.
Public Debate, Policy, Impacts, and Attribution
Impacts of Climate Change
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article traces the history of scientific thinking about climate impacts, from early speculation about warming to modern research on ecosystems, agriculture, health, storms, drought, and human risk.
The Public and Climate Change
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article examines how climate science entered public debate, including media coverage, environmental politics, industry opposition, scientific warnings, and changing public understanding.
Government: The View from Washington
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article follows the relationship between climate science and U.S. government policy, including Cold War research, environmental agencies, congressional hearings, and disputes over regulation.
Climate Modification Schemes
| Spencer Weart | American Institute of Physics | April 2026
This article explores the history of weather and climate modification ideas, including cloud seeding, geoengineering proposals, military interest, and debates about whether humans should deliberately alter climate.
Explainer: The 60-Year History of Carbon Offsets
| Carbon Brief Staff | Carbon Brief | September 24, 2023
This timeline traces the history of carbon offsets, showing how climate accounting, emissions markets, forestry projects, and net-zero claims developed alongside climate science and policy.
The History of Climate Attribution Science
| World Weather Attribution | World Weather Attribution | 2024
This page explains the field of rapid event attribution, a newer branch of climate science that estimates how global warming affects the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather.
Detection and Attribution of Climate Change
| Carbon Brief Staff | Carbon Brief | 2024
This Carbon Brief project tracks attribution studies of extreme weather, showing how climate science has moved from global warming detection to event-specific risk analysis.
The Atomic Origins of Climate Science
| Paul N. Edwards | The New Yorker | January 30, 2017
This article explores the Cold War roots of climate science, including nuclear research, atmospheric monitoring, computer modeling, and the institutions that shaped modern climate knowledge.
Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change
| National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine | National Academies Press | 2016
This report explains the development of extreme-event attribution science and how improved observations and models allow scientists to connect some events with climate change.
Scientists Clarify Starting Point for Human-Caused Climate Change
| Roz Pidcock | Carbon Brief | August 24, 2016
This article discusses research suggesting that human-caused warming began earlier than many scientists had assumed, using historical ocean and temperature evidence to trace the start of industrial-era climate change.
Two Degrees: The History of Climate Change’s Speed Limit
| Roz Pidcock | Carbon Brief | December 8, 2014
This article traces the scientific and political history of the two-degree warming limit, showing how climate science became connected to international targets and risk thresholds.
Merchants of Doubt
| Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway | Bloomsbury | 2010
This book examines organized campaigns to challenge scientific evidence on tobacco smoke, acid rain, ozone depletion, and global warming, giving important context for the public history of climate science.
The Discovery of Global Warming
| Spencer R. Weart | Harvard University Press | 2003
This book gives a concise historical account of how scientists discovered global warming, from nineteenth-century heat radiation experiments to twentieth-century climate modeling and public controversy.
James Hansen’s 1988 Congressional Testimony
| Philip Shabecoff | The New York Times | June 24, 1988
This article reported James Hansen’s Senate testimony that global warming had begun, a major moment when climate science entered mainstream political and public debate.
Inadvertent Climate Modification
| National Academy of Sciences | National Academy of Sciences | 1975
This report helped define climate change as a scientific research problem and called for improved observations, models, and understanding of human influence on climate.
The Study of Man’s Impact on Climate
| William W. Kellogg and Margaret Mead, editors | MIT Press | 1970
This report from an early climate conference reflected growing scientific concern that human activity could alter global climate through greenhouse gases, aerosols, land use, and other changes.
Restoring the Quality of Our Environment
| President’s Science Advisory Committee | The White House | 1965
This report warned the U.S. government that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels could produce measurable climate change, marking an important early policy moment for climate science.
Global Warming: Early Warning Signs
| Union of Concerned Scientists | Union of Concerned Scientists | 1999
This resource reflects the late twentieth-century moment when climate science moved from abstract projections to visible indicators such as melting ice, warming temperatures, and ecological change.
The 1988 Senate Hearing That Put Climate Change on the Map
This NASA article looks back at James Hansen’s 1988 testimony and explains why it became a landmark in the public history of climate science.
The Forgotten Woman Who Discovered the Greenhouse Effect
| Ellie Cawthorne | BBC Future | March 30, 2020
This article tells the story of Eunice Foote’s neglected contribution to climate science and explains why her work was overlooked for more than a century.
The Woman Who Demonstrated the Greenhouse Effect
| NOAA Climate.gov | NOAA Climate.gov | 2021
This article explains Eunice Foote’s early carbon dioxide experiments and places her work in the longer history of climate science.
