Svante Arrhenius

Svante Arrhenius was a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner. He is famous as the father of climate change science.  Arrhenius became interested in a debate occupying the scientific community,  namely the cause of the Ice Ages. Could it be, he wondered,  that vast swings in the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide,  lasting tens of millions of years, were the trigger? 

The link between carbon dioxide and the Earth's temperature had been made years before.  It was the French scientist Jean Baptiste Fourier, who first realized that certain atmospheric gases shrouded the planet like a bell jar, transparent to sunlight,  but absorbing infrared rays. He called them greenhouse gases.  Arrhenius set himself task of working out just how much water and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warmed the planet.  He was the first person to realize the possibility that human activities like the burning of coal can double the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,  and raise the temperature of the Earth.