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How a 1967 paper gave rise to modern climate models

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Piers Forster writes about how a classic paper published in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences  laid the foundations of modern climate models in a Nature News and Views piece, published today.

Describing the 1967 paper by Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald as “arguably the greatest climate science paper of all time”, Prof Forster says the work established firmly the role of carbon dioxide in global warming and offered a robust mathematical model that reflected real-world findings – the first of its kind to do so.

Their work was a forerunner of today’s highly advanced climate models but also proof of a simpler process too, says Prof Forster, who uses the In Retrospective article to call for a renaissance in radiative-convective modelling.