Callendar Effect (eBook)

Guy Stewart Callendar (1898-1964) is noted for identifying, in 1938, the link between the artifcial production of carbon dioxide and global warming. Today this is called the 'Callendar Efect. ' He was one of Britain's leading steam and combustion engineers, a specialist in infrared physics, author of the standard reference book on the properties of steam at high tempe- tures and pressures, and designer of the burners of the notable World War II airfeld fog dispersal system, FIDO. He was keenly interested in weather and climate, taking measurement so accurate that they were used to correct the ofcial temperature records of central England and collecting a series of worldwide weather data that showed an unprecedented warming trend in the frst four decades of the twentieth century. He formulated a coherent theory of infrared absorption and emission by trace gases, established the nineteenth-century background concentration of carbon dioxide, and - gued that its atmospheric concentration was rising due to human activities, which was causing the climate to warm. Callendar's contributions to climatology led the way in the mid-twentie- century transition from the traditional practice of gathering descriptive c- mate statistics to the new and exciting feld of climate dynamics. In the frst half of the twentieth century, the carbon dioxide theory of climate change xiv Introduction had fallen out of favor with climatists.

JAMES RODGER FLEMING is an internationally known historian of science and technology and Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Colby College. He is a graduate of the Pennsylvania State University (B.S. astronomy), Colorado State University (M.S. atmospheric science) and Princeton University (Ph.D. history). He is the founder and first president of the International Commission on History of Meteorology, editor-in-chief of History of Meteorology, and history editor of the Bulletin of the AMS. In 2003 Professor Fleming was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the advancement of Science (AAAS) 'for pioneering studies on the history of meteorology and climate change and for the advancement of historical work within meteorological societies.' Professor Fleming held the Charles A. Lindberg Chair in Aerospace History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum for 2005-06 and currently holds the Roger Revelle Fellowship in Global Environmental Stewardship from the AAAS. He is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. His books include Meteorology in America, 1800-1870 (Johns Hopkins, 1990), Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (Oxford, 1998), and Intimate Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History of Weather and Climate (Science History Publications/USA, 2006).

---

Guy Stewart Callendar (1898-1964) is noted for identifying, in 1938, the link between the artifcial production of carbon dioxide and global warming. Today this is called the "e;Callendar Efect. "e; He was one of Britain's leading steam and combustion engineers, a specialist in infrared physics, author of the standard reference book on the properties of steam at high tempe- tures and pressures, and designer of the burners of the notable World War II airfeld fog dispersal system, FIDO. He was keenly interested in weather and climate, taking measurement so accurate that they were used to correct the ofcial temperature records of central England and collecting a series of worldwide weather data that showed an unprecedented warming trend in the frst four decades of the twentieth century. He formulated a coherent theory of infrared absorption and emission by trace gases, established the nineteenth-century background concentration of carbon dioxide, and - gued that its atmospheric concentration was rising due to human activities, which was causing the climate to warm. Callendar's contributions to climatology led the way in the mid-twentie- century transition from the traditional practice of gathering descriptive c- mate statistics to the new and exciting feld of climate dynamics. In the frst half of the twentieth century, the carbon dioxide theory of climate change xiv Introduction had fallen out of favor with climatists.