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AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Guy Stewart Callendar (1898-1964) is noted for identifying the link between the artificial production of carbon dioxide, enhanced sky radiation, and global warming. Today this is called the "Callendar Effect." Hc was one of Britain's leading steam and combustion engineers, a specialist in infrared physics, author of the standard reference work on the properties of steam at high temperatures and pressures, and a designer of key components of the notable World War II airfield fog dispersal system called "FIDO." He was keenly interested in weather and climate, taking measurements so accurate that they were used to correct the official temperature records of central England, and collecting a series of worldwide weather data that showed an unprecedented warming trend in the first four decades of the twentieth century. He formulated a coherent theory of infrared absorption and emission by trace gases, established the nineteenth-century background concentration of carbon dioxide at 290ppm, and argued that its atmospheric concentration was rising due to human activities, which was causing the climate to warm. He did this in 1938!
A new book on Callendar published by AMS, The Callendar Effect: The Life and Work of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898-1964), the Scientist Who Established the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change, by lames Rodger Fleming ofColby College, is now available. A companion DVD, sold separately, contains Callendar's letters, journals, and other documents, including copious amounts of weather and climate data. For more information, see www.ametsoc.org/pubs/books, and to order, go to the last page of the Bulletin, or contact AMS at [email protected] or 617-227-2-I26, ext. 686.
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