Scientist helped create U.N. panel on climate change

Bert Bolin, 82, a Swedish climate scientist and co-founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning U.N. panel on climate change, died Sunday of stomach cancer at a Stockholm hospital.

As early as the 1950s, Bolin produced research about the circulation of carbon in nature that remains relevant to the debate on climate change. He played a key role in communicating the dangers of climate change and served as the first chairman of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1988 to 1998.

The panel won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore for helping alert the world to the threat of global warming.

Bolin was born May 15, 1925, in Nykoping, Sweden. He completed his doctorate at Stockholm University in 1956 and was a professor of meteorology there from 1961 to 1990. He had also served as the scientific director of the European Space Agency.

He received many awards for his research on climate, including the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal in 1984, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 1988 and the Blue Planet Prize in 1995.

His last book, “A History of the Science and Politics of Climate Change: The Role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” was published in November.