On this day, July 29 1974 a World Meteorological Organisation conference on climate modelling began, running until 10 August.
As Bert Bolin (one of THE key figures) wrote in the foreword-
At the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in June 1972, it was emphasized that the earth’s climate is of basic importance to man and his well-being. Climatic variability and possible change are still essentially unpredictable although they are significant factors in the continued development of both industrialized and developing countries. Some of the most important problems that confront us were very well summarized in the SMIC report “Study of Man’s Impact on Climate”, (1) which was available at the UN conference and served as an important reference document. In recommendation 79d of the conference, it was recommended that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in co-operation with the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) “continue to carry out the GARP (Global Atmospheric Research Programme) to better understand the general circulation of the atmosphere, the causes of climatic change and whether these causes are natural or the result of man’s activities”.
At its eighth session in London in March 1973, the JOC considered in detail the role of GARP for studies of climate and its fluctuations. It was proposed that the next step towards an active programme would be the organization of an International Study Conference on the Physical Basis of Climate and Climate Modelling….
The conference was held at Wijk outside Stockholm during the period 29 July to 10 August 1974 with a total attendance of about 70 scientists from different parts of the world. Their devoted work during two weeks has resulted in the present report.
https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=7112
Why this matters.
These were the building blocks – between 1970 and 1975 – when climate scientists patiently assembled the evidence, debated, refined. By about 1976/7 it was pretty clear what was coming, just a question of when (how fast, in what order). They did try to warn the politicians. And some of the politicians kinda sorta listened a bit.
What happened next?
The scientists kept at it. (Impact) Science is very very cool.. Some joined the dots, understood the implications, quicker than others. By 1979 the smarter ones were getting quite nervous….
UPDATE 3 July 2024. See this 1995 interview with CC Warren.
WMO started already in the 1970’s to concentrate more than before on climate problems. An Executive Committee panel on Climate Change was established in 1975, with Dr. Bill Gibbs from Australia as Chairman, and CCL, under the chairmanship of Helmut Landsberg, from 1973, re-oriented its effort towards environmental problems related to climate. About the same time, in 1974, the Global Atmospheric Research Program had a meeting in Stockholm in order to agree on which problems related to climate that should be of main interest to this program in the next few years. In fact the meeting discussed the fundamental question to change the classical approach to climate studies from the statistical one towards a more physically-oriented one. In fact in the Stockholm Conference on the Physics of Climate in 1974, the numerical forecasting modelers who had worked for about ten years or more on modeling the general circulation of the atmosphere were now interested in trying to apply similar mathematical approaches to the global circulation of the atmosphere and to other aspects of understanding of the future climate. It would then be possible to clarify what could be expected to happen on the globe, if the increase of the carbon dioxide from human emissions from burning fossil fuel would continue without change.
The Global Atmospheric Research Program, when it had been accepted by the U.N. in 1962, included a proposal for a program divided into two parts: one on the experiment to improve the weather forecasting on the basis of increased observations around the globe. This experiment, proposed for about ten years by Bo Doos in WMO, had in 1974, reached a stage where it could be expected to take place within the next five years. For that reason, Dr. Bert Bolin, who was in charge of the Global Atmospheric Research Program, thought that it was timely to start with the second part of the GARP program, namely the climate part. This was the basic reason why the Conference in Stockholm in 1974 was called and the physical foundations of climate were established.