ARRHENIUS, Svante. On the Influence of the Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.
London: Francis & Taylor, 1896. First edition.

Rare offprint of the English version of his landmark paper on the greenhouse effect which precedes the German version printed by the Swedish Academy (Über den Einfluss ...) by six months.

In this paper Arrhenius gave the first quantitative investigation of the influence of changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on the temperature of the Earth’s surface. This was the first attempt to quantify the greenhouse effect, described earlier in qualitative terms by Joseph Fourier in 1824. Arrhenius “examines the importance of carbon dioxide in the earth’s heat balance and concludes that a doubling of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would result in an average global temperature increase of about 6 Kelvin's, or 6°C. He publishes his results in the paper ‘On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground’.” (Parkinson, p.433).

“Although Arrhenius’ work on the greenhouse effect was originally motivated by a wish to explain the temperature variations during the quaternary glaciation cycles, he soon applied his results to the issue of possible future climate change caused by industrial emissions of CO2, from fossil fuel combustion. His first estimate of a man-made global temperature change was published in 1896 [ibid].” (Crawford: Svante Arrhenius and the Greenhouse Effect).

As mentioned in Crawford’s biography Arrhenius often published his papers in both German and English versions in order to make them more widely known. In the case of this paper there are three versions: Arrhenius presented his ideas to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on the 8th January 1896, and submitted a lengthy memoire (100 pages) to be published in the Supplement series of the Memoirs of the Academy, and an English translation, done by James Walker, was submitted to the leading journal Philosophical Magazine. The English version was shorter (40 pages), due mainly to the omission of numerous tables of data on temperature. Probably because of the length of the German version it was first published in November 1896. The English version was printed in April 1896. Then a third version, identical to the German November version, was again issued in 1897 in the entire volume 22 of the Supplement series to the Memoirs of the Swedish Academy. The separate German version from November was printed in 130 copies (private correspondence with the Swedish Academy). The offprint of the April version, offered here, was most likely printed in a smaller number.

Rare; not in Erik Waller’s collection of offprints. We can locate only two copies: The Gelkie Collection (University of Edinburgh) and Aspendale, Australia. 

8vo: 218 x 140 mm. Offprint from: Philosophical Magazine, April 1896, pp. 237-276. Original printed wrappers, two small pieces missing from the right margin of the front wrapper, otherwise in very fine condition.