Bert Bolin - Career and Awards

Career and Awards

Bolin was Professor of Meteorology at Stockholm University 1961-1990, and involved in international climate research cooperation from the 1960s. Bolin was involved in organising use of the new satellite tools for climate research, which led to the formation of the ICSU Committee on Atmospheric Sciences (CAS) in 1964, with Bolin becoming its first Chairman. CAS started the Global Atmospheric Research Programme (GARP) in 1967, which Bolin also chaired; GARP became the World Climate Research Programme in 1980.

In the mid-1980s, a 500-page report (Brundtland Report) which Bolin was involved with contributed to the setting up of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Under his chairmanship (from 1988 to 1997), the IPCC produced its First Assessment Report (1990) and Second Assessment Report (1995), contributing to the IPCC sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore. Bolin was asked to accept the Prize on behalf of the IPCC, but was too ill to attend. Bolin is credited with bringing together a diverse range of views among the panel's 3,500 scientists into something resembling a consensus. The first report led to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the second to the Kyoto Protocol.

He has been scientific director of the European Space Research Organisation (now known as European Space Agency). He received many awards and honors for his work in climate research, including the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal (1984), the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (1988), the highest atmospheric science award of the American Meteorological Society and the Blue Planet Prize (1995), often considered as the Nobel Prize for environmental sciences. He also jointly received the Global Environment Facility's 1999 Global Environment Leadership Award. Bolin was a member of the Swedish, Norwegian and Russian Academies of Sciences.

In November 2007, shortly before his death, Bolin published the partly autobiographical A History of the Science and Politics of Climate Change: The Role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.