"He saw clearly the unprecedented warming now playing out and made his views clear, even when few were willing to listen," a fellow scientist said of researcher Wallace Smith Broecker.
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| A polar bear tests the strength of thin sea ice in the Arctic on August 22, 2015. Mario Hoppmann / European Geosciences Union/AFP - Getty Images file |
NEW YORK (AP) — A scientist who raised early alarms about
climate change and popularized the term "global warming" has died.
Wallace Smith Broecker was 87.
The longtime Columbia
University professor and researcher died Monday at a New York City
hospital, according to a spokesman for the university's Lamont-Doherty
Earth Observatory. Kevin Krajick said Broecker had been ailing in recent
months.
Broecker
brought "global warming" into common use with a 1975 article that
correctly predicted rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would
lead to pronounced warming. He later became the first person to
recognize what he called the Ocean Conveyor Belt, a global network of
currents affecting everything from air temperature to rain patterns.
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| Wallace Smith Broecker, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University in New York, addresses the audience during the Balzan prize ceremony in Rome on Nov. 21, 2008. Gregorio Borgia / AP file |
"Wally was unique, brilliant and combative," said Princeton
University professor Michael Oppenheimer. "He wasn't fooled by the
cooling of the 1970s. He saw clearly the unprecedented warming now
playing out and made his views clear, even when few were willing to
listen."
In the Ocean Conveyor Belt, cold, salty water in
the North Atlantic sinks, working like a plunger to drive an ocean
current from near North America to Europe. Warm surface waters borne by
this current help keep Europe's climate mild.
Otherwise,
he said, Europe would be a deep freeze, with average winter temperatures
dropping by 20 degrees Fahrenheit or more and London feeling more like
Spitsbergen, Norway, which is 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Broecker said his studies suggested that the conveyor is the
"Achilles heel of the climate system" and a fragile phenomenon that can
change rapidly for reasons not understood. It would take only a slight
rise in temperature to keep water from sinking in the North Atlantic, he
said, and that would bring the conveyor to a halt. Broecker said it is
possible that warming caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases could be
enough to affect the ocean currents dramatically.
"Broecker
single-handedly popularized the notion that this could lead to a
dramatic climate change 'tipping point' and, more generally, Broecker
helped communicate to the public and policymakers the potential for
abrupt climate changes and unwelcome 'surprises' as a result of climate
change," said Penn State professor Michael Mann.
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In 1984, Broecker told a House subcommittee that the buildup
of greenhouse gases warranted a "bold, new national effort aimed at
understanding the operation of the realms of the atmosphere, oceans, ice
and terrestrial biosphere."
"We live in a climate system
that can jump abruptly from one state to another," Broecker told the
Associated Press in 1997. By dumping into the atmosphere huge amounts of
greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil
fuels, "we are conducting an experiment that could have devastating
effects."
"We're playing with an angry beast — a climate system that has been shown to be very sensitive," he said.
Broecker
received the National Medal of Science in 1996 and was a member of the
National Academy of Science. He also served a stint as the research
coordinator for Biosphere 2, an experimental living environment turned
research lab.
Broecker was born in Chicago in 1931 and grew up in suburban Oak Park.
He
joined Columbia's faculty in 1959, spending most of his time at the
university's laboratory in Palisades, New York. He was known in science
circles as the "Grandfather of Climate Science" and the "Dean of Climate
Scientists."
"His discoveries were
fundamental to interpreting Earth's climate history," said Oppenheimer.
"No scientist was more stimulating to engage with: he was an instigator
in a good way, willing to press unpopular ideas, like lofting particles
to offset climate change. But it was always a two-way conversation,
never dull, always educational. I'll miss him."
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