Coronavirus. Scientists were close to a coronavirus vaccine years ago. Then the money dried up. "We just could not generate much interest," a researcher said of the difficulty in getting funding By the 1930s, Tesla, already a legend, was working at the University of Chicago, conducting experiments trying to make a body invisible through electricity. This was the work that would become the foundation of the Philadelphia Experiment. In 1939, the work was moved to the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies. 5 Miasma Theory. Doctors of the Middle Ages believed some dangerous vapor in the air, referred to as miasma, caused diseases. The belief in miasma was so rife that malaria was named after it. Malaria was formed from the Italian words mala ("bad") and aria ("air"). Obviously, people believed malaria was caused by bad air. Isaac Newton Eyes Optics. Experimental result: The nature of color and light. When: 1665-1666. Before he was that Isaac Newton — scientist extraordinaire and inventor of the laws of motion, calculus and universal gravitation (plus a crimefighter to boot) — plain ol' Isaac found himself with time to kill. Some time ago, scientists began experiments to find out it would whether be possible lớn set up a "village" under the sea. A special room was built and lowered into the water of Port Sudan in the Red Sea. For 29 days, five men lived at a depth of 40 feet. At a much lower level, another two divers stayed for a week in a smaller "house". LIVIO: Scientists, you know, you would have thought that by definition they change their minds all the time because, I mean, the way science progresses is that, you know, you have a certain theory nz5worw. History of Climate Change Interactive Timeline The tables below contain all of the items that are in the timeline above, organized by category greenhouse gases, modeling, past climate, impacts of climate change, and climate reports. If you have suggestions for additions to this timeline of the History of Climate Science Research, please contact us. Greenhouse Gases and the Greenhouse Effect Date Event 1640 Carbon Dioxide Discovered Johann Baptista van Helmolt, Flemish alchemist, determined that air is a mixture of gases. He studied carbon dioxide, which he called the “spirit of wood” because it was given off when wood was burned. In an experiment, he burned coal to see how much carbon dioxide it added to the air. 1754 First Carbon Dioxide Detector Joseph Black, a medical student in Edinburgh, figured out that limewater can be used as a carbon dioxide CO2 detector. He observed that the normally clear liquid turned milky when exposed to "fixed air," which is what he called CO2. He started measuring the gas everywhere with his limewater, and found that it was released from mineral water, fermenting yeast, burning coal and oil, cremating corpses, and human exhalation. The limewater instrument was later improved by Lord Cavendish, and became known as the Cavendish Apparatus. Learn more The Discovery of the Greenhouse Effect 1760 Industrial Revolution Begins Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the way people live and work has changed dramatically as manufacturing expanded. Over time, the amount of fossil fuels burned increased, which has increased the amount of carbon dioxide CO2 in the atmosphere . Before the Industrial Revolution, there was approximately 280 parts per million ppm of CO in the air. Today, that amount is over 400 ppm. 1824 Describing Earth's Atmosphere as a Greenhouse Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier, a mathematician working for Napoleon, was the first to describe how Earth's atmosphere retains warmth on what would otherwise be a very cold planet.. To help explain the concept, he compared the atmosphere to the glass walls of a greenhouse. Learn more The Discovery of the Greenhouse Effect 1856 Discovering Gases That Trap Heat Eunice Foote, American scientist, discovered that carbon dioxide and water vapor cause air to warm in sunlight. In 1856, she presented her findings at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science AAAS. “A paper was read before the late meeting of the Scientific Association, by Prof. Henry for Mrs. Eunice Foot, detailing her experiments to determine the effects of the sun’s rays on different gases,” noted an 1856 article in Scientific American. 1859 Testing the Heat-Trapping Ability of Gases John Tyndall, British physicist, tested the gases in the atmosphere to find out which are responsible for the greenhouse effect. He found that nitrogen and oxygen, which make up almost all of the atmosphere, have no ability to trap heat, but that three gases present in smaller quantities do carbon dioxide, ozone, and water vapor. Tyndall speculated that if the amounts of these gases dropped, it would chill the Earth. 1896 Connecting Coal, Carbon Dioxide, and Climate Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius recognized that burning coal could increase carbon dioxide and warm the climate. He estimated how much carbon dioxide the ocean could absorb. In an 1896 lecture, Arrhenius noted that it was not yet possible to calculate how fast temperature was rising. He also speculated that warming would be beneficial as people in the future "might live under a milder sky and in less barren surroundings." Learn more Svante Arrhenius and the Greenhouse Effect [.pdf] 1938 Increasing Carbon Dioxide and Increasing Temperatures British coal engineer George Callendar compiled all carbon dioxide measurements made over the previous 100 years and found that the amount of CO2 was increasing. He also found that temperatures were rising. His conclusion was that this was a good thing, that "the return of the deadly glaciers should be delayed indefinitely." Read his 1949 article Can Carbon Dioxide Influence Climate? 1957 Our Unintended Experiment Roger Revelle, oceanographer, and Hans Suess, Austrian-born chemist, realizing that carbon dioxide from industrial sources must be building up in the atmosphere, wrote in 1957 "Thus human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future." 1958 Climate Science on Television The Bell Telephone Science Hour addressed how our actions could be changing Earth's climate. "Even now, [we] may be unwittingly changing the world's climate through the waste products of [our] civilization," said the narrator. "Due to our release from factories and automobiles every year of more than six billion tons of carbon dioxide, which helps the air absorb heat from the Sun, our atmosphere seems to be getting warmer." 1958 Daily Measurements of Carbon Dioxide Charles Keeling started making daily measurements of the amount of carbon dioxide in the air atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii. That first March day, he found 313 parts per million ppm of carbon dioxide in the air. The measurements, which are still make each day, reached 400 ppm on May 9, 2013, and continue to climb. 1988 Climate in Congress NASA climate scientist James Hansen testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee stating that climate was warming, greenhouse gases are responsible for the warming, and we are responsible for the growth in these gases. 1992 An Increasingly Acidic Ocean scientists Stephen V. Smith and Buddemeier pointed out that more carbon dioxide CO2 in the ocean could be a problem for coral reefs. Later experiments confirmed their hypothesis that CO2 makes seawater slightly acidic, which makes it difficult for corals and other animals to build reefs. Today at NCAR, scientist Joanie Kleypas builds on their work, researching the impacts of acidic oceans on marine life. 2016 CO2 Stays Above 400 ppm Year-round September is typically when carbon dioxide is at a minimum in its annual cycle. September 2016 was the first time that minimum level was over 400 parts per million. Before large-scale burning of fossil fuels, CO2 levels were about 280 ppm. Learn more The World Passes 400 PPM Threshold. Permanently Modeling the Earth and Future Climate Date Event 1960s Simple Models to Study the Atmosphere Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald developed a basic model of the atmosphere at NOAA. With the model, they found that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes higher temperatures at Earth's surface. This simple model was the first step toward development of complex Earth system models. Read their 1967 paper Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity “Greenhouse gases are the second most important factor for climate, after the Sun.” -Syukuro Manabe 1960s Modeling the Whole Atmosphere At the National Center for Atmospheric Research, scientists Akira Kasahara and Warren Washington developed a model of the whole atmosphere called a general circulation model. At first, they ran the model on a CDC 3600, a computer that filled a room yet only had a single processor. “We pretty much beat the thing up because we were running a general circulation model on it 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Washington. “They didn’t anticipate for people to use computers in that way.” Learn more NCAR's CDC 3600 1975-1985 Better Models and Faster Computers More powerful supercomputers like the Cray 1A allowed researchers to develop more complex models that included the dynamics of both the atmosphere and ocean. Their results confirmed those from earlier models climate is warming because of the greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere. Learn more NCAR's Cray 1A 1990s Climate System Models New models were developed to include how the ocean, land, sea ice, and atmosphere interact to affect the climate. At the end of the decade, the National Center for Atmospheric Research ran a new model, the Community Climate System Model CCSM, on its latest supercomputer to learn more about interactions in Earth's climate system. Learn more 1998 special issue on CCSM results in the Journal of Climate 1990 Regional Climate Modeling Robert Dickinson led a team to create a regional climate model for the western United States in 1989 and, in 1990, Filippo Giorgi simulated regional climate using a model nested in a general circulation model GCM. Regional climate modeling has allowed predictions of how global climate change impacts local areas. Learn more Thirty years of regional climate modeling 2010 Earth System Models Provide Improved Understanding Models that can include dynamics of the Earth system, including feedbacks and biogeochemical cycling, gave a more detailed view of climate change and its impacts. Advancements in modeling at NCAR, NOAA, and other research centers around the world have ushered in a new era in understanding of our complex planet. Learn more Community Earth System Model at NCAR NOAA’s First Earth System Model 2020 Climate Models are Getting Future Warming Projections Right Climate models have been making predictions since the 1970s, but are the predictions right? To find out, scientists ran 17 global climate models and compared the results with observed temperatures over the past half-century. Fourteen of the models predicted past temperatures accurately, which gives scientists confidence in the models’ ability to correctly project future warming. Learn more Climate Models are Getting Future Warming Right Studying Past Climate Date Event 1891 Climate Recorded in Dust Self-taught geologist John Hardcastle realized that large deposits of wind-blown dust known as loess in New Zealand record changes in climate from Ice Ages to warm periods in between. "This growing dust heap played the part of an observant bystander, taking notes of certain climatic phenomena as they successively arose." —John Hardcastle Learn more John Hardcastle on Glacier Motion and Glacial Loess 1966 Ice Core Uncovers 8,200 Years of Climate At Camp Century, Greenland, an ice core was extracted that showed 8,200 years of annual snow accumulation as thin layers in the ice. The thin layers of ice allowed scientists to reconstruct ancient climate using an ice core for the first time. Learn more Core of climate history 1966 Climate History from the Ocean Floor In 1966, a shipbuilding company began making a ship with a drill rig on top for the Deep Sea Drilling Project, a project based at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, California. The drill rig would allow scientists to collect cores from the ocean floor around the world that contain layers of sediments – a record of ancient changes in climate over millions of years. Today the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program continues to collect these deepsea records. Learn more Integrated Ocean Drilling Program 1985 Drilling 150,000 Years Deeper into the Ice Ice cores extracted from Antarctic ice in 1985 showed carbon dioxide and temperature had gone up and down together in wide swings over the past 150,000 years, the same relationship that computer models suggested. Learn more Core of climate history 2005 Finding Really Old Ice and its Climate History A deep ice core from East Antarctica helped us understand how climate has changed over the past 650,000 years. Studying ancient air bubbles in the ice, scientists have learned details about the ancient atmosphere, including that levels of carbon dioxide are unusually high today compared to past interglacial periods. Learn more Core of climate history 2012 Indigenous Climate Knowledge Since 2012, the Rising Voices program has brought indigenous knowledge and western science together to improve understanding of climate change and other types of science and to develop strategies for resilient and sustainable communities. "We need to appreciate the experience and knowledge that has been transferred from generation to generation to generation in Native American communities." - Bob Gough Learn more Rising Voices at NCAR The Science of Climate Impacts Date Event 1950s Shrinking Arctic Sea Ice Measurements since the 1950s indicate that the amount of sea ice in the Arctic has been declining. The Arctic is projected to have no summer ice cover by the middle of this century. Check on sea ice at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. 1950s-1970s Air Pollution Dampens Warming Aerosols, emitted into the atmosphere from smokestacks and tailpipes, caused a slight cooling of climate, which fueled speculation that we could enter an Ice Age. As countries passed clean air legislation, aerosol pollution decreased and climate warming continued. 2003 Heat Wave Linked to Climate Change Researchers determined that climate change played a large role in the 2003 heatwave in Europe, which resulted in more than 30,000 deaths. Learn more European Summer Heat Wave of 2003 2006 Economic Impacts of Climate Change The Stern Review described the economic impacts of climate change, finding that mitigating reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and adapting making changes to the way we live would be much less expensive than the cost of trying to recover from the disastrous impacts of climate change in the future. Read the report The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change 2007-2008 Studying Impacts in the Polar Regions During International Polar Year which was actually two years' long 2007-2008, scientists documented numerous impacts of climate change on the polar regions, which are warming more rapidly than other areas of Earth. Impacts included melting ice, thawing permafrost, and changes in ecosystems. They found that changes were especially pronounced in the Arctic. 2011 The Effect of Climate Change on Extreme Weather A new branch of climate science, called attribution research, formed to study how global climate change affects extreme weather events such as heat waves, hurricanes, floods, and droughts. Each year since 2011, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has issued a special report about extreme weather events during the past year and how the risk of severe weather has been altered by climate change. Read the report Explaining Extreme Events from a Climate Perspective 2019 Dwindling Biodiversity With Earth system models, scientists are now able to study how species and ecosystems around the world are likely to be affected by climate change and other human impacts. According to a 2019 United Nations report, climate change and other human impacts such as pollution and land use are threatening species worldwide. "Around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken," according to the report. Read the report United Nations 2019 Report Learn how NCAR is modeling Western Pacific coral reefs 2021 2020 Ties with 2016 as the Warmest Year On Record 2016 and 2020 tied as the warmest years on record, according to 2021 reports. Scientists studying long-term temperature records found that the 10 warmest years through 2020 all occurred since 2000. From NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director Gavin Schmidt, “...As the human impact on the climate increases, we have to expect that records will continue to be broken.“ Learn more Read the article NASA Global Temperature Analysis More information Global Temperature Rankings The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC Date Event 1988 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC Formed The IPCC was formed by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations to review the latest climate science every few years and help governments around the world understand what we know about climate change, its impacts, and efforts to adapt and mitigate. Learn more About the IPCC 1990 First Climate Assessment Report by the IPCC Published in 1990, the IPCC's First Assessment Report stated that it was certain that "human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases."According to the report, greenhouse gas increases had caused temperature to increase by to Celsius - Fahrenheit over the past century and would cause global average temperature to warm about 1°C by 2025 and 3°C by 2100. Projections for regional temperature and precipitation changes were highly uncertain. Learn more Read the Overview of the IPCC First Assessment Report [.pdf] 1995 Evidence Suggests Human Influence on Climate The Second Assessment Report of the IPCC provided key information that led to the development of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997."Considerable progress has been made in the understanding of climate change science since 1990," wrote the authors. Acknowledging that global climate had changed over the past century, the authors noted that regional climate change was also evident and that "global sea level has risen by 10 - 25 centimeters 4-10 inches over the past 100 years." Learn more About the Kyoto Protocol 2001 New and Stronger Evidence That We Are Causing Climate Change According to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC, "there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." Climate models projected that, between 1990 and 2100, Earth's atmosphere would warm by to to depending on how much greenhouse gas humans emitted during that time. "The projected rate of warming is very likely to be without precedent during at least the last 10,000 years," noted the authors. The report outlined the impacts of warming, such as changing precipitation patterns, melting glaciers, and rising sea levels, as well as changes to biodiversity, economic systems, and human health. 2007 Climate Change Indisputable The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report noted that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions had increased 70% between 1970 and 2004 and the effects of climate change were becoming apparent. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," wrote the authors of the 2007 report, "as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level." "Anthropogenic [human-caused] warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible," they warned. "More extensive adaptation than is currently occurring is required to reduce vulnerability to climate change." 2014 Emissions Are the Highest in History The IPCC 5th Assessment Report noted that our influence on climate is clear and "recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history." The report's findings led to the Paris Climate Accord, in which nearly all of the world's countries 174 countries in total committed to actions limiting warming to below 2° Celsius Fahrenheit in an effort to avoid the most catastrophic impacts. The United States announced in 2017 that it would back out of the agreement. Learn more Paris Climate Accord 2022 Adverse Impacts are Beyond Natural Climate Variability The Sixth Assessment Report highlights the impacts of human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events. The changes have caused widespread adverse impacts and damages to nature and people, beyond what would be expected from natural climate variability. Learn more IPCC Summary for Policymakers Headline Statements A century ago, people needed help to understand science. Much as they do today. Then as now, it wasn’t always easy to sort the accurate from the erroneous. Mainstream media, then as now, regarded science as secondary to other aspects of their mission. And when science made the news, it was often then as now garbled, naïve or dangerously misleading. Scripps, a prominent newspaper publisher, and William Emerson Ritter, a biologist, perceived a need. They envisioned a service that would provide reliable news about science to the world, dedicated to truth and clarity. For Scripps and Ritter, science journalism had a noble purpose “To discover the truth about all sorts of things of human concern, and to report it truthfully and in language comprehensible to those whose welfare is involved.” And so Science Service was born, 100 years ago — soon to give birth to the magazine now known as Science News. In its first year of existence, Science Service delivered its weekly dispatches to newspapers in the form of mimeographed packets. By 1922 those packets became available to the public by subscription, giving birth to Science News-Letter, the progenitor of Science News. Then as now, the magazine’s readers feasted on a smorgasbord of delicious tidbits from a menu encompassing all flavors of science — from the atom to outer space, from agriculture to oceanography, from transportation to, of course, food and nutrition. In those early days, much of the new enterprise’s coverage focused on space, such as the possibility of planets beyond Neptune. Experts shared their views on whether spiral-shaped clouds in deep space were far-off entire galaxies of stars, like the Milky Way, or embryonic solar systems just now forming within the Milky Way. Articles explored the latest speculation about life on Venus here and here or on Mars. Regular coverage was also devoted to new technologies — particularly radio. One Science Service dispatch informed readers on how to make their own home radio set — for $6. And in 1922 Science News-Letter reported on an astounding radio breakthrough a set that could operate without a battery. You could just plug it in to an electrical outlet. To celebrate our upcoming 100th anniversary, we’ve launched a series that highlights some of the biggest advances in science over the last century. Visit our Century of Science site to see the series as it unfolds. Much of the century’s scientific future was presaged in those early reports. In May 1921, an article on recent subatomic experiments noted the “dream of scientist and novelist alike that man would one day learn how … to utilize the vast stores of energy inside of atoms.” In 1922 Science Service editor Edwin Slosson speculated that the “smallest unit of positive electricity” the proton might “be a complex of many positive and negative particles,” a dim but prescient preview of the existence of quarks. True, some prognostications did not age so well. A 1921 prediction that the United States would be forced to adopt the metric system for commercial transactions is still awaiting fulfillment. A simple, common, international auxiliary language — “confidently predicted” in 1921 to become “a part of every educated person’s equipment” — remains unestablished today. And despite serious considerations of calendar reform by astronomers and church dignitaries reported in May 1922, well over 1,000 of the same old months have since passed without the slightest alteration. On the other hand, “the favorite fruit of Americans of the generations to follow us will be the avocado,” as predicted in 1921, is possibly arguable, though there was no mention of toast — just the suggestion that “a few crackers and an avocado sprinkled with a little salt make a hearty and well-balanced lunch.” One happily false prognostication was the repeated forecast of the rise of eugenics as a “scientific” endeavor. Subscribe to Science News Get great science journalism, from the most trusted source, delivered to your doorstep. “The organization of an artificial selection is only a question of time. It will be possible to renew as a whole, in a few centuries, all humanity, and to replace the mass by another much superior mass,” a “distinguished authority on anthropo-sociology” declared in a Science Service news item from 1921. Another eugenicist proclaimed that “Eugenic Science” should be applied to “shed the light of reason on the primeval instinct of reproduction,” so that “disgenic marriages” would be banned just as bigamy and incest are. In the century since, thanks to saner and more sophisticated knowledge of genetics and more social enlightenment in general, eugenics has been disavowed by science and is now revived in spirit only by the ignorant or malevolent. And during that time, real science has progressed to an elevated degree of sophistication in many other ways, to an extent almost unimaginable to the scientists and journalists of the 1920s. It turns out that the past century’s groundbreaking experimental discoveries, revolutionary theoretical revelations and prescient speculations have not eliminated science’s familiarity with false starts, unfortunate missteps and shortsighted prejudices. When Science Service now Society for Science launched its mission, astronomers were unaware of the extent of the universe. No biologist knew what DNA did, or how brain chemistry regulated behavior. Geologists saw that Earth’s continents looked like separated puzzle pieces, but declared that to be a coincidence. Modern scientists know better. Scientists now understand a lot more about the details of the atom’s interior, the molecules of life, the intricacies of the brain, the innards of the Earth and the expanse of the cosmos. Yet somehow scientists still pursue the same questions, if now on higher levels of theoretical abstraction rooted in deeper layers of empirical evidence. We know how the molecules of life work, but not always how they react to novel diseases. We know how the brain works, except for those afflicted by dementia or depression or when consciousness is part of the question. We know a lot about how the Earth works, but not enough to always foresee how it will respond to what humans are doing to it. We think we know a lot about the universe, but we’re not sure if ours is the only one, and we can’t explain how gravity, the dominant force across the cosmos, can coexist with the forces governing atoms. It turns out that the past century’s groundbreaking experimental discoveries, revolutionary theoretical revelations and prescient speculations have not eliminated science’s familiarity with false starts, unfortunate missteps and shortsighted prejudices. Researchers today have expanded the scope of the reality they can explore, yet still stumble through the remaining uncharted jungles of nature’s facts and laws, seeking further clues to how the world works. To paraphrase an old philosophy joke, science is more like it is today than it ever has been. In other words, science remains as challenging as ever to human inquiry. And the need to communicate its progress, perceived by Scripps and Ritter a century ago, remains as essential now as then. Trustworthy journalism comes at a price. Scientists and journalists share a core belief in questioning, observing and verifying to reach the truth. Science News reports on crucial research and discovery across science disciplines. We need your financial support to make it happen – every contribution makes a difference. Subscribe or Donate Now Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word for each of the blanks from 1 to time ago, scientists began experiments to find out 1______ it would be possible to set up a “village” under the sea. A special room was built and lowered 2______ the water of Port Sudan in the Red Sea. For 29 days, five men lived at a depth of 40 feet. At a 3______ lower level, another two divers stayed for a week in a smaller “house”. On returning to the surface, the men said that they had experienced no difficulty in breathing and had 4______ many interesting scientific observations. The captain of the party, Commander Cousteau, spoke of the possibility of 5______ the seabed. He said that some permanent stations were to be set up under the sea, and some undersea farms would provide food for the growing population of the world.

some time ago scientists began experiments