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Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (/ ˈ f ʊr i eɪ,-i ər /; [1] French: [ʒɑ̃ batist ʒozɛf fuʁje]; 21 March 1768 – 16 May 1830) was a French mathematician and physicist born in Auxerre and best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series, which eventually developed into Fourier analysis and harmonic analysis, and their applications to problems of heat transfer and vibrations.
From ancient times, people suspected that the climate of a region could change over the course of centuries. For example, Theophrastus, a pupil of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in the 4th century BC, told how the draining of marshes had made a particular locality more susceptible to freezing, and speculated that lands became warmer when the clearing of forests exposed them to sunlight.
The greenhouse effect on Earth is defined as: "The infrared radiative effect of all infrared absorbing constituents in the atmosphere.Greenhouse gases (GHGs), clouds, and some aerosols absorb terrestrial radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface and elsewhere in the atmosphere."
In developing a theory to explain the ice ages, Arrhenius, in 1896, was the first to use basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate estimates of the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2) will increase Earth's surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.
The nature of this experiment and Fourier's conclusion that gases in the atmosphere could not form a stable barrier like the glass panes may have contributed to atmospheric warming later being known as the 'greenhouse' effect despite the actual mechanism of atmospheric warming being different than that found in an actual greenhouse.
Earth constantly absorbs energy from sunlight and emits thermal radiation as infrared light. In the long run, Earth radiates the same amount of energy per second as it absorbs, because the amount of thermal radiation emitted depends upon temperature: If Earth absorbs more energy per second than it radiates, Earth heats up and the thermal radiation will increase, until balance is restored; if ...
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Joseph Fourier (1768–1830), French, greenhouse effect; Jennifer Francis, climate change in the Arctic; Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), first mapped the course of the Gulf Stream for use in sending mail from the United States to Europe; Chris Freeman, Welsh professor of biogeochemistry; Eigil Friis-Christensen (1944–2018), Danish geophysicist