There is a nearly two centuries history on major papers published on the physics of Climate Science, here's a helpful guide to some of the most important papers
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1824): The First Paper that Recognized the importance of the atmosphere at regulating Earth's (or any celestial body's) Surface Temperature
https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pdf
This was the first scientific attempt to understand global surface temperatures . "On the Temperatures of the Terrestrial Sphere and Interplanetary Space"
A surprisingly complete and thorough examination of the causes for surface temperatures, from the energy output of the Earth's core (very small, he estimated 1/30th °F) to solar radiation and the absorbed and re-radiated heat of the surface, oceans and atmosphere.
Eunice Foote (1856) First paper linking CO2 to absorbed radiation of light:
This groundbreaking work by one of the pioneering women of science - "Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays." The first experimental data on the topic.
John Tyndall (1859) Second paper on CO2's influence on atmospheric heating,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/111604?seq=1
" Note on the Transmission of Radiant Heat through Gaseous Bodies" This details the instrumentation and equipment he used, a wonderful look at the descriptive sciences in the days before they printed drawings or early photos to describe apparatus and methodologies. For actual photos of his equipment, see below:
https://www.rigb.org/explore-science/explore/collection/john-tyndalls-radiant-heat-apparatus
Svante Arrhenius (1896) First attempts to calculate the effect of CO2 concentrations and feedbacks on surface temperature
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786449608620846?journalCode=tphm16
"On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground," The first work to attempt to quantify the exact temperature effects on CO2 (Carbonic Acid), the most important paper written in the 19th century on climate and this is an excellent starting point on modern climate science.
He composed a follow up book in 1906, "Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe " that is not available easily on the web but a major word of caution on this, there are a lot of fake versions of this paper distributed! Note: This is very large, and not ideal viewing on a mobile device.
https://sealevel.info/Arrhenius1908_worldsinmaking00.pdf
Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin (1899) The first warnings of possible climate issues ahead/
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/608449
"An Attempt to Frame a Working Hypothesis of the Cause of Glacial Periods on an Atmospheric Basis" A groundbreaking paper in many ways, clearly a companion piece to Arrhenius, 1896 and it discusses in far greater details the geological processes of glaciation and deglaciation as amplified by CO2's effect on the atmosphere. If people wish to believe the idea of global warming is a modern late-20th century political movement, this should immediately disqualify their arguments.
Edward O. Hulbert (1931) An attempt to determine the precise doubling effect of CO2
https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.38.1876
"The Temperature of the Lower Atmosphere of the Earth" An early work trying to determine the doubling effect on CO2, the results are not that far from some long paleoclimate assays of very long data sets available to us in the last few years: "Calculation shows that doubling or tripling the amount of the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere increases the average sea level temperature by about 4° and 7°K, respectively; halving or reducing to zero the carbon dioxide decreases the temperature by similar amounts. ' A little over a century after Tyndall, he draws this conclusion: "Thus the calculation indicates that the carbon dioxide theory of the ice ages, originally proposed by Tyndall, is a possible theory."
Guy Callendar (1938) The source of the "Callendar Equation" still used to determine for radiative forcing of CO2.
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/qj.49706427503
"The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature", At the time this was published, global CO2 levels were roughly 309PPM, compared to the pre-industrial level of 276PPM. To put this into perspective, that difference (11.7%) took 185 years, we're currently (annual average) 12.2% higher than 20 years ago- our current rate of change is nearly an order of magnitude faster than the rate which caused Callendar such alarm in 1938.
Gilbert Plass (1956), The first major warning paper, originally commissioned by the US Navy
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1956.tb01206.x
"The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change", A century after Foote's first paper, this is a no holds barred account of the risks of future crisis we're observing today, and the introduction of "Climate Change" terminology to describe the effects of Carbon dioxide concentrations.
Roger Revelle & Hans E. Suess (1957) Isotopic evidence that the increasing CO2 levels were not based on modern CO2 but fossil fuel derived CO2
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3402/tellusa.v9i1.9075
"Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO2 during the Past Decades", Better methods and equipment allow identification of the source of increasing CO2, clearly determining by looking at isotopic ratios their source.
An excellent early paper on the risks involved to future climate,
Syukuro Manabe & Richard T. Wetherald (1967) The beginnings of computer climate modeling and advanced Global Circulation Models
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/24/3/1520-0469_1967_024_0241_teotaw_2_0_co_2.xml
"Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity" - This is probably the most important paper on climate change published. it was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for Syukuro Manabe for his work on computer models of "Global Circulation Models" this was their first collaboration, they added another paper in 1972 trying to refine their earlier calculations
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/32/1/1520-0469_1975_032_0003_teodtc_2_0_co_2.xml
We could easily dedicate an entire page of this website simply on his works alone; it's just easier to link to his bibliography:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/search?f_0=author&q_0=Syukuro+Manabe
Sawyer, (1972) The "ignored" warnings about anthropogenic CO2, now 50 years old.
https://wwhttps://www.nature.com/articles/239023a0w.nature.com/articles/239023a0
"Man-Made Carbon Dioxide and the "Greenhouse" effect - Sorry this is a PDF link, this paper predicted a short term 0.6°C increase in global temperatures if we saw a 25% increase in CO2 concentrations- We didn't hit 25% (only 13%) but there was a 0.5°C increase.
https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/warming_papers/sawyer.1972.warm2000.pdf
Prata, 2007: More evidence to support Manabe and Wetherald's 1967 model of water vapor feedback models.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01431160802036508?journalCode=tres20
"The climatological record of clear‐sky longwave radiation at the Earth's surface: evidence for water vapour feedback?" The answer is "yes, water vapor feedback leads to greater warming than just CO2 alone".
Feldman, et al, 2015: An investigation into the atmosphere's change in energy absorption caused by added CO2
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14240
"Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010". This paper and several later companion pieces detail and quantify observational changes in atmospheric absorption and how they correlate to known physics and prior models. This ties all of the theoretical and practical observations of nearly 200 years together, in a clear and concise package: Observations, hypothesis, experiments, theory, and now validation.
Etminan, et al, 2016: An important paper defining new calculations for the three main greenhouse gases and their inter-relationships
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL071930
"Radiative forcing of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide: A significant revision of the methane radiative forcing" - this isn't "new research" but an important resource for determining the impacts of CH4, N2O and CO2, this is the benchmark for forcing calculations.
Kramer, et al, 2021: Another clear piece of satellite based data showing a change in between incoming and outgoing energy balance.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL091585
" Observational Evidence of Increasing Global Radiative Forcing" one of the most conclusive papers on the clear role human emissions are having on the atmosphere and therefore global surface temperatures
There is a nearly two centuries history on major papers published on the physics of Climate Science, here's a helpful guide to some of the most important papers
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1824): The First Paper that Recognized the importance of the atmosphere at regulating Earth's (or any celestial body's) Surface Temperature
https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pdf
This was the first scientific attempt to understand global surface temperatures . "On the Temperatures of the Terrestrial Sphere and Interplanetary Space"
A surprisingly complete and thorough examination of the causes for surface temperatures, from the energy output of the Earth's core (very small, he estimated 1/30th °F) to solar radiation and the absorbed and re-radiated heat of the surface, oceans and atmosphere.
Eunice Foote (1856) First paper linking CO2 to absorbed radiation of light:
This groundbreaking work by one of the pioneering women of science - "Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays." The first experimental data on the topic.
John Tyndall (1859) Second paper on CO2's influence on atmospheric heating,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/111604?seq=1
" Note on the Transmission of Radiant Heat through Gaseous Bodies" This details the instrumentation and equipment he used, a wonderful look at the descriptive sciences in the days before they printed drawings or early photos to describe apparatus and methodologies. For actual photos of his equipment, see below:
https://www.rigb.org/explore-science/explore/collection/john-tyndalls-radiant-heat-apparatus
Svante Arrhenius (1896) First attempts to calculate the effect of CO2 concentrations and feedbacks on surface temperature
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786449608620846?journalCode=tphm16
"On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground," The first work to attempt to quantify the exact temperature effects on CO2 (Carbonic Acid), the most important paper written in the 19th century on climate and this is an excellent starting point on modern climate science.
He composed a follow up book in 1906, "Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe " that is not available easily on the web but a major word of caution on this, there are a lot of fake versions of this paper distributed! Note: This is very large, and not ideal viewing on a mobile device.
https://sealevel.info/Arrhenius1908_worldsinmaking00.pdf
Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin (1899) The first warnings of possible climate issues ahead/
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/608449
"An Attempt to Frame a Working Hypothesis of the Cause of Glacial Periods on an Atmospheric Basis" A groundbreaking paper in many ways, clearly a companion piece to Arrhenius, 1896 and it discusses in far greater details the geological processes of glaciation and deglaciation as amplified by CO2's effect on the atmosphere. If people wish to believe the idea of global warming is a modern late-20th century political movement, this should immediately disqualify their arguments.
Edward O. Hulbert (1931) An attempt to determine the precise doubling effect of CO2
https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.38.1876
"The Temperature of the Lower Atmosphere of the Earth" An early work trying to determine the doubling effect on CO2, the results are not that far from some long paleoclimate assays of very long data sets available to us in the last few years: "Calculation shows that doubling or tripling the amount of the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere increases the average sea level temperature by about 4° and 7°K, respectively; halving or reducing to zero the carbon dioxide decreases the temperature by similar amounts. ' A little over a century after Tyndall, he draws this conclusion: "Thus the calculation indicates that the carbon dioxide theory of the ice ages, originally proposed by Tyndall, is a possible theory."
Guy Callendar (1938) The source of the "Callendar Equation" still used to determine for radiative forcing of CO2.
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/qj.49706427503
"The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature", At the time this was published, global CO2 levels were roughly 309PPM, compared to the pre-industrial level of 276PPM. To put this into perspective, that difference (11.7%) took 185 years, we're currently (annual average) 12.2% higher than 20 years ago- our current rate of change is nearly an order of magnitude faster than the rate which caused Callendar such alarm in 1938.
Gilbert Plass (1956), The first major warning paper, originally commissioned by the US Navy
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1956.tb01206.x
"The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change", A century after Foote's first paper, this is a no holds barred account of the risks of future crisis we're observing today, and the introduction of "Climate Change" terminology to describe the effects of Carbon dioxide concentrations.
Roger Revelle & Hans E. Suess (1957) Isotopic evidence that the increasing CO2 levels were not based on modern CO2 but fossil fuel derived CO2
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1957.tb01849.x
"Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO2 during the Past Decades", Better methods and equipment allow identification of the source of increasing CO2, clearly determining by looking at isotopic ratios their source.
An excellent early paper on the risks involved to future climate,
Syukuro Manabe & Richard T. Wetherald (1967) The beginnings of computer climate modeling and advanced Global Circulation Models
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/24/3/1520-0469_1967_024_0241_teotaw_2_0_co_2.xml
"Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity" - This is probably the most important paper on climate change published. it was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for Syukuro Manabe for his work on computer models of "Global Circulation Models" this was their first collaboration, they added another paper in 1972 trying to refine their earlier calculations
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/32/1/1520-0469_1975_032_0003_teodtc_2_0_co_2.xml
We could easily dedicate an entire page of this website simply on his works alone; it's just easier to link to his bibliography:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/search?f_0=author&q_0=Syukuro+Manabe
Sawyer, (1972) The "ignored" warnings about anthropogenic CO2, now 50 years old.
https://wwhttps://www.nature.com/articles/239023a0w.nature.com/articles/239023a0
"Man-Made Carbon Dioxide and the "Greenhouse" effect - Sorry this is a PDF link, this paper predicted a short term 0.6°C increase in global temperatures if we saw a 25% increase in CO2 concentrations- We didn't hit 25% (only 13%) but there was a 0.5°C increase.
https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/warming_papers/sawyer.1972.warm2000.pdf
Prata, 2007: More evidence to support Manabe and Wetherald's 1967 model of water vapor feedback models.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01431160802036508?journalCode=tres20
"The climatological record of clear‐sky longwave radiation at the Earth's surface: evidence for water vapour feedback?" The answer is "yes, water vapor feedback leads to greater warming than just CO2 alone".
Feldman, et al, 2015: An investigation into the atmosphere's change in energy absorption caused by added CO2
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14240
"Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010". This paper and several later companion pieces detail and quantify observational changes in atmospheric absorption and how they correlate to known physics and prior models. This ties all of the theoretical and practical observations of nearly 200 years together, in a clear and concise package: Observations, hypothesis, experiments, theory, and now validation.
Etminan, et al, 2016: An important paper defining new calculations for the three main greenhouse gases and their inter-relationships
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL071930
"Radiative forcing of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide: A significant revision of the methane radiative forcing" - this isn't "new research" but an important resource for determining the impacts of CH4, N2O and CO2, this is the benchmark for forcing calculations.
Kramer, et al, 2021: Another clear piece of satellite based data showing a change in between incoming and outgoing energy balance.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL091585
" Observational Evidence of Increasing Global Radiative Forcing" one of the most conclusive papers on the clear role human emissions are having on the atmosphere and therefore global surface temperatures
Yuwei Wang, Yi Huang (2020) The Surface Warming Attributable to Stratospheric Water Vapor in CO2-Caused Global Warming
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020JD032752
Stratospheric water vapor (SWV) is recognized as a potentially important positive feedback in global warming. The SWV change induces significant downward radiative flux perturbation at the tropopause and therefore is hypothesized to substantially amplify the surface warming.
Robin Wordsworth, et al, 2024: Fermi Resonance and the Quantum Mechanical Basis of Global Warming
https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.15177
Although the scientific principles of anthropogenic climate change are well-established, existing calculations of the warming effect of carbon dioxide rely on spectral absorption databases, which obscures the physical foundations of the climate problem. Here we show how CO2 radiative forcing can be expressed via a first-principles description of the molecule's key vibrational-rotational transitions. Our analysis elucidates the dependence of carbon dioxide's effectiveness as a greenhouse gas on the Fermi resonance between the symmetric stretch mode ν1 and bending mode ν2
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JD041296
We calculate the climate forcing for the 2 ys after the 15 January 2022, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai (Hunga) eruption. We use satellite observations of stratospheric aerosols, trace gases and temperatures to compute the tropopause radiative flux changes relative to climatology. Overall, the net downward radiative flux decreased compared to climatology.
Scrips Institute Weekly CO2 Data:
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_weekly_mlo.txt
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
FTP and web link to the latest weekly CO2 measurements
NOAA:
https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/aggi.html
NOAA's database for multiple different greenhouse gases, with additional links for individual Excel compatible downloads: Radiative Forcings for each of the major gases since 1979:
https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/AGGI_Table.csv
Mole Fractions (parts per million or greater) for each of the major gases since 1979:
https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/NOAA_MoleFractions_2021.csv
NOAA has links for each of the three major GHGs, CO2 is updated daily, and very promptly- CH4 and N2O are lagging by a few months.
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2/co2_trend_gl.txt
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/n2o/n2o_mm_gl.txt
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/ch4/ch4_mm_gl.txt
Climate Reanalyzer:
https://climatereanalyzer.org/
An excellent visual global "snapshot" of many real time climate data observations. Run by the University of Maine, this is an excellent resource to see what's happening to global climate here and now. Below is my personal choice, today's global and regional comparative temperatures displayed visually and as a series of numbers.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom
NSIDC
National Snow and Ice Data Center:
Another fine source for both data and explainers for polar information, the website is updated daily.
One of their easiest to understand daily sources is "Charctic" a visual guide to polar ice extent,
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
There's a great resource for raw polar ice data inside of their Excel FTP server, you can download easy to understand and work with data files updated daily on polar ice, at many different levels of granularity from the entire pole (both north and south) to each individual region.
https://masie_web.apps.nsidc.org/pub//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/seaice_analysis/
My personal favorite Excel spreadsheet has both poles individual daily data in a very easy to work with format with some mild analysis already built in. This is a literal "one stop shop" for all polar extent data needs.
Polar Science Center:
An excellent resource for Arctic Ice information, the main data page includes links to several different indexes including daily and monthly summaries.
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/data/
Arctic Ice Volume Data, in monthly format since 1979:
Max Planck Institute for Solar Research:
https://www2.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/data.html
The finest source for all solar data, in different time resolutions from daily insolation (solar output measured at the top of Earth's atmosphere: From 1610 to 2018:
https://www2.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/data/SATIRE-T_SATIRE-S_TSI_20210618.txt
Here's the long term SATIRE-M 8770 year solar output dataset.
https://www2.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/data/SATIRE-M_wu18_tsi.txt
Colorado State University:
https://lasp.colorado.edu/home/science/
One of the most valuable sources for global climate and solar studies, they cover a large range of databases on previous and active projects, the link below is for the latest solar output studies:
https://lasp.colorado.edu/data/tsis/tsi_data/tsis_tsi_L3_c24h_latest.txt
Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations :
https://wwwbis.sidc.be/silso/datafiles
A daily resource for sunspot data from 1818 on, or monthly from 1749 on
The current month's data can be found here:
https://wwwbis.sidc.be/silso/DATA/EISN/EISN_current.txt
2°Institute:
https://www.2degreesinstitute.org/
A great source of climate data with excellent explainers on all of the major topics.
A great place to start is their "Climate Dashboard", it leads to several charts dealing with past and current levels of CO2, CH4, N2O, O2, sea level and surface temperatures. Each section has it's own drop down menu where you can find data at several different time frames and you can zoom in on each chart to examine specific it more closely. Can't recommend any website more highly than this.
https://www.climatelevels.org/?pid=2degreesinstitute&theme=grid-light
Global Milankovitch Data Calculator:
A wonderful resource that can project the future solar energy on any point on the earth for the next 20 million years. Just enter the longitude and latitude, the time you want to look at and how often (in thousands of years) you want it to report data.
http://vo.imcce.fr/insola/earth/online/earth/online/index.php
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