The Climate System

Abstract

It was just at the end of the nineteenth century that a true understanding of how the climate system operates began to develop. Stefan’s law was a critical component, but knowledge of Earth’s reflectivity (albedo) and the role of greenhouse gases were also critical. As best I can tell, the first person who was able to take these major components into account to develop a comprehensive view was Swedish Physicist/Chemist Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927). He received his doctorate from Uppsala University in 1884. It contained 56 theses concerning chemistry and physics; most would still be accepted today. However, the most important idea in the dissertation was an explanation of the fact that pure salts and pure water are both poor conductors of electricity, but solutions of salts in water are good conductors. His idea was that when introduced into water salt dissociates into electrically charged particles, the ‘ions’ that Michael Faraday had discovered during his experiments with passing electricity through water/salt solutions in 1834. Faraday’s belief had been that ions were produced in the process of electrolysis; Arrhenius proposed that even in the absence of an electric current, the salts in solution were in the form of charged ions. He concluded that chemical reactions in solution were reactions between ions. He believed that acids were substances which produce hydrogen ions (H⁺) in solution and that bases were substances which produce hydroxide ions (OH⁻) in solution.

I’ve lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.

John Steinbeck