The Discovery of Global Warming

August 2003    [HOME]   List of illustrations   BACK to "Biosphere" - BACK to "Simple Models"

Climate interactions: this 1974 summary of feedbacks was a pioneering attempt to show the complexity of the system. Nowhere did biology appear explicitly...

... whereas a mid-1980s "wiring diagram" put biology in the center. An extract is below; the whole diagram can be seen by clicking here (big file, 118k).



Upper: Partly inspired by a private communication from W.D. Sellers. Reproduced with permission from W.W. Kellogg and S.H. Schneider, Science 186 (1974), p. 1164, copyright © 1974 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Lower: H.J. Schellnhuber, Nature 402 suppl. (1999) p. C21, redrawn from Arthur Fisher, Mosaic 19 (1988), pp. 56-57. All material on this page copyright © 2003 American Institute of Physics.