Why is svante arrhenius famous

He believed the theory of panspermia, in which life might have moved from planet to planet by the transport of spores.

He proposed a universal language, which he based on English. In September of , Arrhenius suffered from acute intestinal inflammation. He died on October 2 of that year and was buried in Uppsala. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads.

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So, if atmospheric CO2 levels increased, water vapour would ensure the warming effect was seriously magnified. What followed was a year doing what Arrhenius described as "tedious calculations". His starting point was a set of readings taken by US astronomer Samuel Langley, who had tried to work out how much heat the Earth received from the full moon.

Arrhenius used the data with figures of global temperatures to work out how much of the incoming radiation was absorbed by CO2 and water vapour, and so heated the atmosphere. Between 10, and , calculations later, Arrhenius had some rough, but useful, results that he published in If CO2 levels halved, he concluded, the the Earth's surface temperature would fall by C.

There was a flipside to his calculations: doubling CO2 levels would trigger a rise of about C. Beyond the argument over ice ages it wasn't lost on Arrhenius that human activity, in the form of widespread burning of coal, was pumping atmospheric CO2 above the natural levels that help make the Earth habitable. At a lecture that same year, he declared: "We would then have some right to indulge in the pleasant belief that our descendants, albeit after many generations, might live under a milder sky and in less barren surroundings than is our lot at present.

As the first to put hard figures on the greenhouse effect, it's unsurprising Arrhenius's estimates weren't spot on. He thought a doubling of CO2 would raise temperatures by C. Scientists now say C is more likely. Over the next decades, his work was criticised, backed up and criticised again. Many disregarded his conclusions, pointing to his simplification of the climate and how he failed to account for changes in cloud cover and humidity.

The oceans would absorb any extra CO2 pumped into the atmosphere, and any remainder would be absorbed by plant life, leading to a more lush landscape, sceptics argued. In , nine years after Arrhenius had died a Nobel prizewinner for his work on ionic solutions, English engineer Guy Callendar gave the greenhouse theory a boost. An expert on steam technology, he took up meteorology as a sideline and became interested in suggestions of a warming trend.

Callendar pieced together temperature measurements from the 19th century onwards and saw an appreciable rise. The warming was probably due to the higher levels of CO2. The existence of an increasing greenhouse effect was hotly debated until the postwar funding of the s kicked in and researchers began to get firm data. In , physicist Gilbert Plass confirmed adding CO2 to the atmosphere would increase infrared radiation absorbed, adding that industrialisation would raise the Earth's temperature by just over 1C per century.

By the end of the s, Plass and other scientists in the US started warning government officials that greenhouse warming might become a serious issue in the future.