Meteorologist Wins Science’s Tyler Prize
A Swedish meteorologist whose research helped lay the theoretical groundwork for modern computerized weather forecasting and who has been instrumental in understanding the dangers of the “greenhouse” effect has been named recipient of the 1988 Tyler Prize, generally considered the most prestigious award in environmental science.
Bert Bolin, a professor at the University of Stockholm and director of the International Meteorological Research Institute, will receive a gold medallion and a check for $150,000 this evening in Los Angeles. The prize is administered by USC.
Since the mid-1950s, the 62-year-old Bolin has played a major role in determining how human activities--especially the burning of fossil fuels for energy and the destruction of forests--have drastically increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide acts like the glass in a greenhouse, permitting the sun’s radiation to reach the Earth’s surface but blocking the radiation of the Earth’s heat into space. Climatologists estimate that the world’s temperature has already increased between 0.5 and 1.25 degrees Fahrenheit since 1850. Carbon dioxide concentrations increased 25% during the same period.
A continued increase in carbon dioxide emissions could lead to a worldwide rise in temperature and changes in sea levels, rainfall patterns and agriculture.
It was also due largely to Bolin’s efforts that the International Council of Scientific Unions last year approved the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program/A Study in Global Change, a multidisciplinary effort to understand the changing climate and the interactions of all environmental processes. It is the largest international scientific program ever undertaken and is expected to extend into the next century.
