Svante August Arrhenius ( , ; 19 February 1859 – 2 October 1927) was a
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
scientist
A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences.
In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosoph ...
. Originally a
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
, but often referred to as a
chemist
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe t ...
, Arrhenius was one of the founders of the science of
physical chemistry
Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistica ...
. He received the
Nobel Prize for Chemistry
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...
in 1903, becoming the first
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
Nobel laureate. In 1905, he became director of the Nobel Institute, where he remained until his death.
["Arrhenius, Svante August" in '']Chambers's Encyclopædia
''Chambers's Encyclopaedia'' was founded in 1859Chambers, W. & R"Concluding Notice"in ''Chambers's Encyclopaedia''. London: W. & R. Chambers, 1868, Vol. 10, pp. v–viii. by William and Robert Chambers of Edinburgh and became one of the most ...
''. London: George Newnes
Sir George Newnes, 1st Baronet (13 March 1851 – 9 June 1910) was a British publisher and editor and a founding figure in popular journalism. Newnes also served as a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for two decades. His company, George Newne ...
, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 635.
Arrhenius was the first to use principles of
physical chemistry
Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistica ...
to estimate the extent to which increases in atmospheric
carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is trans ...
are responsible for the Earth's increasing surface temperature. His work played an important role in the emergence of modern climate science. In the 1960s,
Charles David Keeling
Charles David Keeling (April 20, 1928 – June 20, 2005) was an American scientist whose recording of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory confirmed Svante Arrhenius's proposition (1896) of the possibility of anthropogenic contribution to ...
demonstrated that the quantity of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions into the air is enough to cause
global warming
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
.
The
Arrhenius equation
In physical chemistry, the Arrhenius equation is a formula for the temperature dependence of reaction rates. The equation was proposed by Svante Arrhenius in 1889, based on the work of Dutch chemist Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff who had noted in 1 ...
,
Arrhenius acid Arrhenius may refer to
* Birgit Arrhenius (born 1932), Swedish archaeologist
* Carl Axel Arrhenius (1757–1824), Swedish army lieutenant and amateur mineralogist who discovered ytterbite, a mineral that led to the discovery of yttrium by Johan Gado ...
, Arrhenius base,
lunar
Lunar most commonly means "of or relating to the Moon".
Lunar may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Lunar'' (series), a series of video games
* "Lunar" (song), by David Guetta
* "Lunar", a song by Priestess from the 2009 album ''Prior t ...
crater Arrhenius,
Martian
Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has appeared as a setting in works of fiction since at least the mid-1600s. It became the most popular celestial object in fiction in the late 1800s as the Moon was evidently lifeless. At the time, the pr ...
crater
Arrhenius,
the mountain of
Arrheniusfjellet, and the Arrhenius Labs at
Stockholm University were so named to commemorate his contributions to science.
Biography
Early years
Arrhenius was born on 19 February 1859 at
Vik Vik (Old Norse: vík) means wick or bay in Norwegian and Swedish (''vig'' in Danish), and it may refer to the following:
Places Iceland
*Vík í Mýrdal, a village in southern Iceland
Iran
*Vik, Iran, a village in Zanjan Province, Iran
Norway
*V ...
(also spelled Wik or Wijk), near
Uppsala
Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019.
Located north of the c ...
,
Kingdom of Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
,
United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, the son of Svante Gustav and Carolina Thunberg Arrhenius, who were Lutheran. His father had been a
land surveyor
Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is c ...
for
Uppsala University
Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation.
The university rose to significance during ...
, moving up to a supervisory position. At the age of three, Arrhenius taught himself to read without the encouragement of his parents and, by watching his father's addition of numbers in his account books, became an
arithmetical
prodigy
Prodigy, Prodigies or The Prodigy may refer to:
* Child prodigy, a child who produces meaningful output to the level of an adult expert performer
** Chess prodigy, a child who can beat experienced adult players at chess
Arts, entertainment, and ...
. In later life, Arrhenius was profoundly passionate about mathematical concepts, data analysis and discovering their relationships and laws.
At age eight, he entered the local cathedral school, starting in the
fifth grade
Fifth grade (called Grade 5 in some regions) is a year of education in many nations, and some other regions call it Year 5. In the United States, the fifth grade is the fifth and last year of elementary school in most schools. In other schools, it ...
, distinguishing himself in
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
and
mathematics, and graduating as the youngest and most able student in 1876.
Ionic disassociation
At the University of Uppsala, he was dissatisfied with the chief instructor of physics and the only faculty member who could have supervised him in chemistry,
Per Teodor Cleve
Per Teodor Cleve (10 February 1840 – 18 June 1905) was a Swedish chemist, biologist, mineralogist and oceanographer. He is best known for his discovery of the chemical elements holmium and thulium.
Born in Stockholm in 1840, Cleve earned his B ...
, so he left to study at the Physical Institute of the Swedish Academy of Sciences in
Stockholm under the physicist
Erik Edlund in 1881.
His work focused on the
conductivities of
electrolytes. In 1884, based on this work, he submitted a 150-page dissertation on electrolytic conductivity to Uppsala for the
doctorate
A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...
. It did not impress the professors, who included Cleve, and he received a fourth-class degree, but upon his defense it was reclassified as third-class. Later, extensions of this very work would earn him the
1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Arrhenius put forth 56 theses in his 1884 dissertation, most of which would still be accepted today unchanged or with minor modifications. The most important idea in the dissertation was his explanation of the fact that solid crystalline salts disassociate into paired charged particles when dissolved, for which he would win the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Arrhenius's explanation was that in forming a
solution, the salt disassociates into charged particles that
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic inducti ...
had given the name
ion
An ion () is an atom or molecule with a net electrical charge.
The charge of an electron is considered to be negative by convention and this charge is equal and opposite to the charge of a proton, which is considered to be positive by conve ...
s many years earlier. Faraday's belief had been that ions were produced in the process of
electrolysis, that is, an external direct current source of electricity was necessary to form ions. Arrhenius proposed that, even in the absence of an electric current,
aqueous solutions of salts contained ions. He thus proposed that chemical reactions in solution were reactions between ions.
The dissertation did not impress the professors at Uppsala, but Arrhenius sent it to a number of scientists in Europe who were developing the new science of
physical chemistry
Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistica ...
, such as
Rudolf Clausius
Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius (; 2 January 1822 – 24 August 1888) was a German physicist and mathematician and is considered one of the central founding fathers of the science of thermodynamics. By his restatement of Sadi Carnot's principle ...
,
Wilhelm Ostwald
Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (; 4 April 1932) was a Baltic German chemist and philosopher. Ostwald is credited with being one of the founders of the field of physical chemistry, with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Walther Nernst, and Svante Arrhen ...
, and
Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff.
They were far more impressed, and Ostwald even came to Uppsala to persuade Arrhenius to join his research team. Arrhenius declined, however, as he preferred to stay in Sweden-Norway for a while (his father was very ill and would die in 1885) and had received an appointment at Uppsala.
In an extension of his
ionic theory Arrhenius proposed definitions for
acids and
bases, in 1884. He believed that acids were substances that produce
hydrogen ions
A hydrogen ion is created when a hydrogen atom loses or gains an electron. A positively charged hydrogen ion (or proton) can readily combine with other particles and therefore is only seen isolated when it is in a gaseous state or a nearly particle ...
in solution and that bases were substances that produce
hydroxide
Hydroxide is a diatomic anion with chemical formula OH−. It consists of an oxygen and hydrogen atom held together by a single covalent bond, and carries a negative electric charge. It is an important but usually minor constituent of water. I ...
ions in solution.
Middle period
In 1885, Arrhenius next received a travel grant from the Swedish Academy of Sciences, which enabled him to study with Ostwald in
Riga (now in
Latvia), with
Friedrich Kohlrausch in
Würzburg
Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is a city in the region of Franconia in the north of the German state of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the ''Regierungsbezirk'' Lower Franconia. It spans the banks of the Main River.
Würzburg ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, with
Ludwig Boltzmann
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (; 20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics, and the statistical explanation of the second law of ther ...
in
Graz, Austria
Graz (; sl, Gradec) is the capital city of the Austrian state of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. As of 1 January 2021, it had a population of 331,562 (294,236 of whom had principal-residence status). In 2018, the popula ...
, and with
Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
.
In 1889, Arrhenius explained the fact that most reactions require added heat energy to proceed by formulating the concept of
activation energy
In chemistry and physics, activation energy is the minimum amount of energy that must be provided for compounds to result in a chemical reaction. The activation energy (''E''a) of a reaction is measured in joules per mole (J/mol), kilojoules p ...
, an energy barrier that must be overcome before two molecules will react. The
Arrhenius equation
In physical chemistry, the Arrhenius equation is a formula for the temperature dependence of reaction rates. The equation was proposed by Svante Arrhenius in 1889, based on the work of Dutch chemist Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff who had noted in 1 ...
gives the quantitative basis of the relationship between the activation energy and the rate at which a reaction proceeds.
In 1891, he became a lecturer at the Stockholm University College (''Stockholms Högskola'', now
Stockholm University), being promoted to professor of physics (with much opposition) in 1895, and
rector
Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to:
Style or title
*Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations
*Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...
in 1896.
Nobel Prizes
About 1900, Arrhenius became involved in setting up the Nobel Institutes and the
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
s. He was elected a member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1901. For the rest of his life, he would be a member of the
Nobel Committee
A Nobel Committee is a working body responsible for most of the work involved in selecting Nobel Prize laureates. There are five Nobel Committees, one for each Nobel Prize.
Four of these committees (for prizes in physics, chemistry, physiolo ...
on Physics and a de facto member of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry. He used his positions to arrange prizes for his friends (
Jacobus van 't Hoff,
Wilhelm Ostwald
Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (; 4 April 1932) was a Baltic German chemist and philosopher. Ostwald is credited with being one of the founders of the field of physical chemistry, with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Walther Nernst, and Svante Arrhen ...
,
Theodore Richards) and to attempt to deny them to his enemies (
Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich (; 14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure ...
,
Walther Nernst,
Dmitri Mendeleev). In 1901 Arrhenius was elected to the Swedish Academy of Sciences, against strong opposition. In 1903 he became the first Swede to be awarded the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...
.
In 1905, upon the founding of the Nobel Institute for Physical Research at Stockholm, he was appointed
rector
Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to:
Style or title
*Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations
*Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...
of the institute, the position where he remained until retirement in 1927.
In 1911, he won the first Willard Gibbs Award.
Society memberships
He was elected an Honorary Member of the
Netherlands Chemical Society in 1909.
He became a Foreign Member of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
(ForMemRS) in 1910.
In 1912, he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
[ Page 14, third column, on the right.]
In 1919, he became foreign member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Later years
Eventually, Arrhenius's theories became generally accepted and he turned to other scientific topics. In 1902, he began to investigate
physiological problems in terms of chemical theory. He determined that reactions in living organisms and in the test tube followed the same laws.
In 1904, he delivered at the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...
a course of lectures, the object of which was to illustrate the application of the methods of physical chemistry to the study of the theory of
toxins and
antitoxins
An antitoxin is an antibody with the ability to neutralize a specific toxin. Antitoxins are produced by certain animals, plants, and bacteria in response to toxin exposure. Although they are most effective in neutralizing toxins, they can also ...
, and which were published in 1907 under the title ''Immunochemistry''.
He also turned his attention to
geology
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...
(the origin of
ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...
s),
astronomy
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...
,
physical cosmology
Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of f ...
, and
astrophysics, accounting for the birth of the
Solar System
The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...
by interstellar collision.
He considered
radiation pressure
Radiation pressure is the mechanical pressure exerted upon any surface due to the exchange of momentum between the object and the electromagnetic field. This includes the momentum of light or electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength that is a ...
as accounting for
comet
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...
s, the
solar corona
A corona ( coronas or coronae) is the outermost layer of a star's atmosphere. It consists of plasma.
The Sun's corona lies above the chromosphere and extends millions of kilometres into outer space. It is most easily seen during a total solar ...
, the
aurora borealis
An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...
, and
zodiacal light
The zodiacal light (also called false dawn when seen before sunrise) is a faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. Brighter around the Sun, it appears in a particularly dark night sky to extend from the Sun's direction ...
.
He thought life might have been carried from planet to planet by the transport of
spores, the theory now known as
panspermia
Panspermia () is the hypothesis, first proposed in the 5th century BCE by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacec ...
. He thought of the idea of a
universal language
Universal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by all or most of the world's people. In some contexts, it refers to a means of communication said to be understood by all humans. It may be the idea of ...
, proposing a modification of the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
.
He was a board member for the ''Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene'' (founded 1909), which endorsed
mendelism at the time, and contributed to the topic of contraceptives around 1910. However, until 1938 information and sale of contraceptives was prohibited in the Kingdom of Sweden.
Gordon Stein
Gordon Stein (April 30, 1941 – August 27, 1996) was an American author, physiologist, and activist for atheism and religious skepticism.
Biography
Stein was born in New York to Jewish parents, and from an early age took an interest in science ...
wrote that Svante Arrhenius was an atheist. In his last years he wrote both textbooks and popular books, trying to emphasize the need for further work on the topics he discussed. In September 1927, he came down with an attack of acute
intestinal
The gastrointestinal tract (GI tract, digestive tract, alimentary canal) is the tract or passageway of the digestive system that leads from the mouth to the anus. The GI tract contains all the major organs of the digestive system, in humans and ...
catarrh
Catarrh is an exudate of inflamed mucous membranes in one of the airways or cavities of the body, usually with reference to the throat and paranasal sinuses. It can result in a thick exudate of mucus and white blood cells caused by the swelling o ...
and died on 2 October. He was buried in Uppsala.
Marriages and family
He was married twice, first to his former pupil Sofia Rudbeck (1894–1896), with whom he had one son, , and then to Maria Johansson (1905–1927), with whom he had two daughters and a son.
Arrhenius was the grandfather of bacteriologist
Agnes Wold, chemist , and
ocean
The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wo ...
biogeochemist .
Greenhouse effect
In developing a theory to explain the
ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...
s, 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 greenhouse effect is a process that occurs when energy from a planet's host star goes through the planet's atmosphere and heats the planet's surface, but greenhouse gases in the atmosphere prevent some of the heat from returning directly ...
.
These calculations led him to conclude that human-caused CO
2 emissions, from fossil-fuel burning and other combustion processes, are large enough to cause global warming. This conclusion has been extensively tested, winning a place at the core of modern climate science. Arrhenius, in this work, built upon the prior work of other famous scientists, including
Joseph Fourier,
John Tyndall and
Claude Pouillet
Claude Servais Mathias Pouillet (16 February 1790 – 14 June 1868) was a French physicist and a professor of physics at the Sorbonne and member of the French Academy of Sciences (elected 1837).
Biography
He studied sciences at the École n ...
. Arrhenius wanted to determine whether greenhouse gases could contribute to the explanation of the temperature variation between glacial and inter-glacial periods. Arrhenius used infrared observations of the moon – by
Frank Washington Very and
Samuel Pierpont Langley
Samuel Pierpont Langley (August 22, 1834 – February 27, 1906) was an American aviation pioneer, astronomer and physicist who invented the bolometer. He was the third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and a professor of astronomy a ...
at the
Allegheny Observatory
The Allegheny Observatory is an American astronomical research institution, a part of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh. The facility is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (ref. # 79002157, ad ...
in
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
– to calculate how much of infrared (heat) radiation is captured by CO
2 and water (H
2O) vapour in Earth's atmosphere. Using 'Stefan's law' (better known as the
Stefan–Boltzmann law
The Stefan–Boltzmann law describes the power radiated from a black body in terms of its temperature. Specifically, the Stefan–Boltzmann law states that the total energy radiated per unit surface area of a black body across all wavelengths ...
), he formulated what he referred to as a 'rule'.
In its original form, Arrhenius's rule reads as follows:
::''if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.''
Here, Arrhenius refers to CO
2 as carbonic acid (which refers only to the aqueous form H
2CO
3 in modern usage). The following formulation of Arrhenius's rule is still in use today:
[Martin E. Walter]
"Earthquakes and Weatherquakes: Mathematics and Climate Change"
''Notices of the American Mathematical Society'', Volume 57, Number 10, p. 1278 (November 2010).
::
where
is the concentration of CO
2 at the beginning (time-zero) of the period being studied (if the same concentration unit is used for both
and
, then it doesn't matter which concentration unit is used);
is the CO
2 concentration at end of the period being studied; ''ln'' is the natural logarithm (= log base e ()); and
is the augmentation of the temperature, in other words the change in the rate of heating Earth's surface (
radiative forcing
Radiative forcing (or climate forcing) is the change in energy flux in the atmosphere caused by natural or anthropogenic factors of climate change as measured by watts / metre2. It is a scientific concept used to quantify and compare the extern ...
), which is measured in
Watt
The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...
s per square
meter
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...
.
Derivations from atmospheric radiative transfer models have found that
(alpha) for CO
2 is 5.35 (± 10%) W/m
2 for Earth's atmosphere.
![Solvay conference, 1922](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Solvay_conference%2C_1922.jpg)
Based on information from his colleague
Arvid Högbom
Arvid Gustaf Högbom was a Swedish geologist. He was a professor of mineralogy and geology at Uppsala University. Biography
Arvid Högbom was born at Vännäs in Västerbotten County, Sweden.
Högbom was a student at Uppsala University earnin ...
, Arrhenius was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes were large enough to cause global warming. In his calculation Arrhenius included the feedback from changes in water vapor as well as latitudinal effects, but he omitted clouds, convection of heat upward in the atmosphere, and other essential factors. His work is currently seen less as an accurate quantification of global warming than as the first demonstration that increases in atmospheric CO
2 will cause global warming, everything else being equal.
![Svante Arrhenius 01](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Svante_Arrhenius_01.jpg)
Arrhenius's absorption values for CO
2 and his conclusions met criticism by
Knut Ångström in 1900, who published the first modern infrared absorption spectrum of CO
2 with two absorption bands, and published experimental results that seemed to show that absorption of infrared radiation by the gas in the atmosphere was already "saturated" so that adding more could make no difference. Arrhenius replied strongly in 1901 (''Annalen der Physik''), dismissing the critique altogether. He touched on the subject briefly in a technical book titled ''Lehrbuch der kosmischen Physik'' (1903). He later wrote ''Världarnas utveckling'' (1906) (German: ''Das Werden der Welten''
907 English
''Worlds in the Making'' 908 directed at a general audience, where he suggested that the human emission of CO
2 would be strong enough to prevent the world from entering a new ice age, and that a warmer earth would be needed to feed the rapidly increasing population:
:: "To a certain extent the temperature of the earth's surface, as we shall presently see, is conditioned by the properties of the atmosphere surrounding it, and particularly by the permeability of the latter for the rays of heat." (p. 46)
:: "That the atmospheric envelopes limit the heat losses from the planets had been suggested about 1800 by the great French physicist Fourier. His ideas were further developed afterwards by Pouillet and Tyndall. Their theory has been styled the hot-house theory, because they thought that the atmosphere acted after the manner of the glass panes of hot-houses." (p. 51)
:: "If the quantity of carbonic acid
2 + H2O → H2CO3 (carbonic acid) ">CO2 + H2O → H2CO3 (carbonic acid) in the air should sink to one-half its present percentage, the temperature would fall by about 4°; a diminution to one-quarter would reduce the temperature by 8°. On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth's surface by 4°; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8°." (p. 53)
:: "Although the sea, by absorbing carbonic acid, acts as a regulator of huge capacity, which takes up about five-sixths of the produced carbonic acid, we yet recognize that the slight percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere may by the advances of industry be changed to a noticeable degree in the course of a few centuries." (p. 54)
:: "Since, now, warm ages have alternated with glacial periods, even after man appeared on the earth, we have to ask ourselves: Is it probable that we shall in the coming geological ages be visited by a new ice period that will drive us from our temperate countries into the hotter climates of Africa? There does not appear to be much ground for such an apprehension. The enormous combustion of coal by our industrial establishments suffices to increase the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air to a perceptible degree." (p. 61)
:: "We often hear lamentations that the coal stored up in the earth is wasted by the present generation without any thought of the future, and we are terrified by the awful destruction of life and property which has followed the volcanic eruptions of our days. We may find a kind of consolation in the consideration that here, as in every other case, there is good mixed with the evil. By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind." (p. 63)
At this time, the accepted consensus explanation is that, historically,
orbital forcing
Orbital forcing is the effect on climate of slow changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis and shape of the Earth's orbit around the sun (see Milankovitch cycles). These orbital changes modify the total amount of sunlight reaching the Earth by up to ...
has set the timing for ice ages, with CO
2 acting as an essential
amplifying feedback. However, CO
2 releases since the industrial revolution have increased CO
2 to a level not found since 10 to 15 million years ago, when the global average surface temperature was up to warmer than now and almost all ice had melted, raising world sea-levels to about 100 feet (30 m.) higher than today's.
Arrhenius estimated based on the CO
2 levels at his time, that reducing levels by 0.62–0.55 would decrease temperatures by 4–5 °C (Celsius) and an increase of 2.5 to 3 times of CO
2 would cause a temperature rise of 8–9 °C in the Arctic.
In his book ''Worlds in the Making'' he described the "hot-house" theory of the atmosphere.
Works
*1884, ''Recherches sur la conductibilité galvanique des électrolytes'', doctoral dissertation, Stockholm, Royal publishing house, P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 155 pages.
*1896a, ''Ueber den Einfluss des Atmosphärischen Kohlensäurengehalts auf die Temperatur der Erdoberfläche'', in the Proceedings of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, Stockholm 1896, Volume 22, I N. 1, pages 1–101.
*1896b,
On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground', London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science (fifth series), April 1896. vol 41, pages 237–275.
*1901a, ''Ueber die Wärmeabsorption durch Kohlensäure'', Annalen der Physik, Vol 4, 1901, pages 690–705.
*1901b, ''Über Die Wärmeabsorption Durch Kohlensäure Und Ihren Einfluss Auf Die Temperatur Der Erdoberfläche''. Abstract of the proceedings of the Royal Academy of Science, 58, 25–58.
* Arrhenius, Svante
Die Verbreitung des Lebens im Weltenraum Die Umschau, Frankfurt a. M., 7, 1903, 481–486.
*
**
*1906, ''Die vermutliche Ursache der Klimaschwankungen'', Meddelanden från K. Vetenskapsakademiens Nobelinstitut, Vol 1 No 2, pages 1–10
*1908,
Das Werden der Welten' (Worlds in the making; the evolution of the universe), Academic Publishing House, Leipzig, 208 pages.
See also
*
Activation energy
In chemistry and physics, activation energy is the minimum amount of energy that must be provided for compounds to result in a chemical reaction. The activation energy (''E''a) of a reaction is measured in joules per mole (J/mol), kilojoules p ...
*
Arrhenius acid Arrhenius may refer to
* Birgit Arrhenius (born 1932), Swedish archaeologist
* Carl Axel Arrhenius (1757–1824), Swedish army lieutenant and amateur mineralogist who discovered ytterbite, a mineral that led to the discovery of yttrium by Johan Gado ...
*
Arrhenius law
*
Arrhenius plot
In chemical kinetics, an Arrhenius plot displays the logarithm of a reaction rate constant, ordinate axis) plotted against reciprocal of the temperature abscissa). Arrhenius plots are often used to analyze the effect of temperature on the rates ...
*
Néel–Arrhenius theory
*
History of climate change science
The history of the scientific discovery of climate change began in the early 19th century when ice ages and other natural changes in paleoclimate were first suspected and the natural greenhouse effect was first identified. In the late 19th centu ...
*
James Croll
James Croll, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS, (2 January 1821 – 15 December 1890) was a 19th-century Scottish scientist who developed a theory of climate variability based on changes in the Earth's planetary orbit, orbit.
Life
James Croll w ...
*
Eunice Newton Foote
Eunice Newton Foote (July 17, 1819 – September 30, 1888) was an American scientist, inventor, and women's rights campaigner. She was the first scientist to conclude that certain gases warmed when exposed to sunlight, and that rising carbo ...
*
George Perkins Marsh
George Perkins Marsh (March 15, 1801July 23, 1882), an American diplomat and philologist, is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist and by recognizing the irreversible impact of man's actions on the earth, a precursor to the ...
*
Milutin Milanković
Milutin Milanković (sometimes anglicised as Milankovitch; sr-Cyrl, Милутин Миланковић ; 28 May 1879 – 12 December 1958) was a Serbian mathematician, astronomer, climatologist, geophysicist, civil engineer and popularizer of ...
*
Greta Thunberg
Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (; born 3 January 2003) is a Swedish environmental activist who is known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation.
Thunberg's activism began when she persuaded ...
– climate activist and distant relative of Arrhenius
*
Viscosity models for mixtures The Viscosity, shear viscosity (or viscosity, in short) of a fluid is a material property that describes the friction between internal neighboring fluid surfaces (or sheets) flowing with different fluid velocities. This friction is the effect of (li ...
References
Sources
*
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
*
*
Enter the Anthropocene: Climate Science in the Early 20th Century" podcast about Arrhenius,
Guy Callendar, and
Charles David Keeling
Charles David Keeling (April 20, 1928 – June 20, 2005) was an American scientist whose recording of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory confirmed Svante Arrhenius's proposition (1896) of the possibility of anthropogenic contribution to ...
, Initial Conditions, Episode 2
* including the Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1903 ''Development of the Theory of Electrolytic Dissociation''
A Tribute to the Memory of Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) – a scientist ahead of his time published in 2008 by the
Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences or ''Kungliga Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien'' (IVA), founded on 24 October 1919 by King Gustaf V, is one of the royal academies in Sweden. The academy is an independent organisation, which prom ...
Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927)– Obituary (one paragraph)
– Obituary (one paragraph)
* "On the influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground", Arrhenius, 1896, online and analyzed on
BibNum'
lick 'à télécharger' for English analysis/small>
*
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