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2 - The World’s First Climate Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2023

Steve M. Easterbrook
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

The first computational climate model was built by a Swedish scientist in 1895, 50 years before the invention of programmable electronic computers. All the calculations had to be done by hand. Despite this, the model shares many similarities with today’s computer-intensive climate models, and is a good introduction to how modern models work. The model also provided the first ever prediction of how our use of fossil fuels would lead to global warming, but that wasn’t why it was built. So what was it built for, and were its predictions any good?

Type
Chapter
Information
Computing the Climate
How We Know What We Know About Climate Change
, pp. 21 - 53
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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