Syukuro Manabe

Syukuro "Suki" Manabe (真鍋 淑郎, Manabe Shukurō^?, born September 21, 1931 in Ehime) is a meteorologist and climatologist who pioneered the use of computers to simulate global climate change and natural climate variations.

Working at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, first in Washington, DC and later in Princeton, New Jersey, Manabe worked with director Joseph Smagorinsky to develop three-dimensional models of the atmosphere. As the first step, Manabe and Wetherald (1967) developed one-dimensional, single-column model of the atmosphere in radiative-convective equilibrium with positive feedback effect of water vapor. Using the model, they found that, in response to the change in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, temperature increases at the Earth's surface and in the troposphere, whereas it decreases in the stratosphere. Manabe also played a critical role in the development of comprehensive general circulation model (Manabe et al. 1965). They used the model to simulate for the first time the three-dimensional response of temperature and the hydrologic cycle to increased carbon dioxide(Manabe and Wetherald, 1975). In 1969 Manabe and Kirk Bryan published the first simulations of the climate by a coupled ocean-atmosphere models, exploring the role of oceanic heat transport in determining the global distribution of climate. Throughout the 1990s early 2000s, Manabe's research group published seminal papers using the coupled models to investigate the time-dependent response of climate to changing greenhouse gas concentrations of the atmosphere (Stouffer et al.,1989; Manabe et al., 1991 & 1992). They also applied the model to the study of past climate change, including the role of freshwater input to the North Atlantic Ocean as a potential cause of the so-called, abrupt climate change evident in the paleoclimatic record (Manabe and Stouffer,1995 & 2000).

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