Professor of meteorology Bert Bolin, who helped focus international attention on the potential dangers to the world’s climate posed by “greenhouse” gases such as carbon dioxide, is the winner of the 1988 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.
A University of Stockholm faculty member and director of the International Meteorological Institute in Stockholm, Bolin has been instrumental in determining how man’s activities have increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He reports that CO2 concentrations have increased 25% in the past 100 years and projects that a continued increase in co2 emissions could lead to sharply altered climatic patterns, marked by a worldwide rise in atmospheric and surface temperatures and changes in sea levels, rainfall patterns, agriculture, forests, and most major ecosystems on Earth.
Bolin’s early meteorological work in the 1950s led to the computerized weather forecasting that is standard today. In the 1960s, he played a key role in ...
