University of Hamburg - to research, to teach, to educate and form, to homepage

Atmospheric Science

Atmospheric Science

Photo: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center

Congratulations Syukuro Manabe

28 May 2018

Together with Susan Solomon, Manabe last week received the Crafoord Prize at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. One of his many great achievements is his seminal 1967 paper on radiative convective equilibrium (RCE), together with Richard Wetherald, perhaps the most influential climate research paper of all time.

The calculation by Manabe and Wetherald stands the test of time remarkably well. They estimated 2.8 K from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 in this very simple model. Lukas Kluft and Sally Dacie (IMPRS PhD students) repeated their calculation with a modern radiative transfer model and get essentially the same answer (2.7 K).

The figure shows RCE temperature profiles for different CO2 concentrations from the 1967 paper (left) and their new calculation (right).

Latest articles

Leonie Nellesen after her MSc defense

Photo: UHH / Bühler

09.02.2026|Research
Improving cloud coverage observations in the Arctic

Leonie Nellesen successfully defended her Master’s thesis. Congrats, Leonie! Her work focused on improving cloud cover observations in the Arctic by using all-sky camera images from Svalbard and developing a new machine-learning algorithm, helping to fill crucial data gaps during the polar night...

Moon

Photo: Privat/Lemke

18.12.2025|Research
DFG Project MW-Luna successfully completed

The project “MW-Luna”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), was successfully completed in August. A total of 9,000 lunar observations from weather satellites were analyzed, establishing the Moon as a reliable flux reference for microwave and infrared instruments. This approach makes...