1999 Fleming, Joseph Fourier, the greenhouse effect, and the quest for a universal theory of terrestrial temperatures (1119302), страница 2
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His magnumopus of 1822 discusses the problem ofterrestrial temperatures and the principlesgoverning the temperature of a greenhouse(‘serre’). In his writings, Fourier acknowledged earlier works on heat by John Leslie,Count Rumford, and others. One of theearliest such references was to the work ofEdme Mariotte who wrote in 1681 thatalthough the Sun’s light and heat easilypassed through glass and other transparentmaterials, heat from other sources (‘chaleurde feu’) did nots.Fourier made observations on the heatingpower of the Sun and on night-time refrigeration.
He conducted experiments on theheating and cooling of objects of differentcomposition and shape, and on the transmission, absorption and reflection of radiantheat. He employed basic physical principlesand formulatedmathematicallaws toexplain and predict universal phenomena,such as ‘the progressive extinction of heatrays in the atmosphere’9.In his Thkorie analytique de la chaleur(1822), Fourier used these results to introduce the elements of a comprehensivemathematical theory of heat: the differentialequations describing the movement of heatin solids and fluids, the variations introduced by external periodic heat sources, andthe transmission of heat by diaphanous substances. While these topics were all contributions to basic physical theory and havebeen read as such by generations of physicists and historians of physics, they werealso the elements of Fourier’s theory ofterrestrial temperatures, with the Earth asthe cooling body, the Sun as the periodicheat source, and the atmosphere as thediaphanous intermediatyl0.It is clear that Fourier considered himselfthe Newton of heat: ‘The principle of heatpenetrates, like gravity, all objects and all ofspace, and it is subject to simple and constant laws’.
As an example of these laws, hecited the distribution of solar heat over theglobe: the daily, yearly and longer periodicvariations that heat both the surface and theinterior of the Earth, which cause variationsbeneath the surface and control the grandmovements of the oceans and the atmosphere. For Fourier the analytical theory ofheat constituted a ‘rational law of atmospheric motion, ocean motion, change of seasons, and so on - a grand geophysical lawconfirmed in the laboratory and expressedby calculus’l’.Citation patternsIn 1836 the physicist C.S.M.
Pouillet,following in Fourier’s tradition, wrote amemoir on solar heat, the radiative effectsof the atmosphere, and the temperature ofspace. Tenth on his list of 16 related objectives was to determine the ‘general conditions of equilibrium of temperature of abody protected by a diathermanous covering analogous to the atmosphere’. Pouilletargued that the equilibrium temperature ofthe atmosphere must be higher than the temperature of outer space and lower than thetemperature of the Earth’s surface. This wasmainly because the atmosphereexerts‘unequal absorbing actions’ on ‘rays of heatderived from space’ as well as those emittedfrom the Earth’s surface. He creditedFourier with this insight, which was basedon earlier experimental work by Saussure:M.
Fourier is, I think, the first who hashad the idea of regarding the unequalabsorption of the atmosphere as exercising an influence on the temperatures ofthe soil. He had been led to this by thebeautifulexperimentsmade by DeSaussure, in 1774, on some elevatedsummits of the Alps and in the adjacentplains, with a view to compare the relative intensities of solar heat.
On thatEndeavour Vol. 23(2) 199973occasion [1824] M. Fourier states in aprecise manner one of the principleswhich have served me to establish theequations of equilibrium’z.Pouillet comparedthe atmospheretoexperiments he had done on solid and liquiddiathermanous screens, for example, panesof glass and layers of water, concluding that‘the atmospheric stratum acts in the mannerof screens of this kind, and .
. . exercises agreater absorption upon the terrestrial thanon the solar rays’. He called this the ‘effectof diathermanous envelopes’. Pouillet, however, had not arrived at a final theory ofterrestrialtemperatures.Like Fourier,Pouillet was also quite interested in whatwas called ‘the temperature of space’ andthe quantities of heat the Earth receivedfrom the Sun, from space, and from other‘celestial bodies’, factors that we haveshown were more central to the theory ofterrestrial temperatures than was the greenhouse effect.John Tyndall referred to Fourier’s work inhis 1861 essay ‘On the Absorption andRadiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours’.Tyndall credited Fourier and others with thenotion that ‘the interception of terrestrialrays [by the atmosphere exercises] the mostimportant influence on climate’.
By now,however, Tyndall had identified a mechanism. His laboratory experiments showedthat water vapor, although transparent tolight rays, was the best absorber of ‘calorificrays’ and that ‘every variation of this constituent must produce a change of climate’.He thought similar effects could be causedby carbon dioxide and by ‘an almost inappreciable admixture of any of the hydrocarbon vapours’. Without venturing quantitative estimates, he suggested that changesin the amount of radiatively active gases inthe atmosphere could have produced ‘all themutations of climate which the researchesof geologists reveal’l3. In his 1896 essay‘On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in theAir upon the Temperature of the Ground’,Svante Arrhenius began the practice ofciting Fourier’s 1827 reprint as the firstmention of the greenhouse effect: ‘Fouriermaintained that the atmosphere acts like theglass of a hot-house, because it lets throughthe light rays of the Sun but retains the darkrays from the groundl4.
Arrhenius’s famousessay, more than any other, seems to be theproximate source of the misquotations andthe tendency to conflate current and historical understandings.Today many scientific review articles andtextbooks contain brief historical allusions,typically drawn from secondary rather thanoriginal sources. This trend can be identifiedin recent citations of Fourier’s work. In a1988 review essay, V. Ramanathan,anauthority on atmospheric radiation, citedFourier’s 1827 article, claiming, ‘The greenhouse effect of the atmosphere was pointedout, perhaps for the first time, by Fourier,who also suggested that human activity canclimate’ls.Againin1988,modify74Endeavour Vol. 23(2) 1999Ramanathan repeated the claim that perhapsFourier’s 1827 article was a famous first:Fourier’s (1827) paper is basically a discourse on the processes governing theheat balance of the atmosphere, the surface, and the interior of the Earth.Fourier pointed out that the atmospherebehaves like the transparent glass coverof a box (exposed to the sun) by allowing sunlight to penetrate to the Earth’ssurface and retaining the longwave radiation (or ‘obscure radiation’ accordingto Fourier) from the Earth’s surface.This inference is perhaps one of theearliest suggestions of the now wellknown greenhouse effect of the atmospherel6.M.D.H.
Jones and A. Henderson-Sellerscited Ramanathan rather than Fourier intheir1990 article,‘Historyof theGreenhouse Effect’, asserting the following:The French physicist,Fourier, wasprobably the first person, in 1827, toallude to the greenhouse effect when hecompared the influence of the atmosphere to the heating of a closed spacebeneath a pane of glass”.In Dead Heat, Michael Oppenheimer andRobert Boyle also cited Fourier’s 1827article but severely garbled the citatio@.
Intheir notes the authors quoted an Englishtranslation of a section of Fourier’s articlethat, although relevant, does not mentionthe greenhouse effect directly and that stopsjust short of Fourier’s important statementthat ‘the effect of solar heat upon air confined within transparent covers has longsince been observed’l9.Ian Rowlandsrepeated this error in his otherwise excellentbook, The Politics of Global AtmosphericChange (1995); he briefly cited the 1827article and cited it wrongly in his notes in away very similar to OppenheimerandBoyle. History was not his focus, however;he covered the 130 years from Fourier toRoger Revelle in one pagezO.RevellehimselfalludedbroadlytoFourier’s pioneering work on the greenhouse effect but did not give references;William Kellogg cited Revelle.
WilfridBach said Fourier (1827) ‘[w]as probablythe first to discuss the CO, [sic]/ greenhouseeffect and compare it with the warming ofair isolated under a glass plate’. Nevermind that the radiative properties of CO,were not investigated until the mid-19thcentury21.Spencer Weart, a historian of physics,cited Fourier (1827) and claimed that thegreenhouse effect was ‘discovered’ in 1896by Arrhenius. His article, a stimulatingcomparison of nuclear issues and globalwarming, followed the established patternof citing Fourier: ‘In 1827 [sic], Frenchphysicist Jean-Baptiste Fourier had suggestedthat the Earth is kept warm because air trapsheat, as if under a pane of glass’22.Mark Handel and James Risbey haveimproved the situation somewhat by notingthat Fourier’s essay was in fact published in1824 and reprinted in 1827.
The followingannotation appears in their very helpfulbibliography:This was the first paper to qualitativelydescribethegreenhouseeffect.Compares the effect of the atmosphereof the earth to that of a pane of glasscovering a bowl. (It is easier to find the1827 version than the nearly identical1824 version. In French. No knownpublished translation, though unpublished ones exist.)23Several corrections are in order here.
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