Table 1.
The most frequently cited references from specific reference publication years in Figs. 1 and 2, which have been cited by papers dealing with climate change
| No | RPY | Reference/comment | NCR |
|---|---|---|---|
| CR1 | 1686 | E. Halley: An historical account of the trade winds, and monsoons, observable in the seas between and near the tropicks, with an attempt to assign the physical cause of the said winds. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 16(179–191), 153–168 (1686) | 22 |
| Edmond Halley (1656–1742) was an English astronomer, geophysicist, and meteorologist, well known for computing the orbit of the eponymous Halley’s Comet. In the paper on trade winds and monsoons he published results from his Helenian expedition. He identified solar heating as the cause of atmospheric motions | |||
| CR2 | 1735 | G. Hadley: Concerning the cause of the general trade-winds. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 39(436–444), 58–62 (1735). doi: 10.1098/rstl.1735.0014 | 24 |
| The publication by George Hadley (1685–1768) describes an atmospheric circulation system that bears the author’s name (Hadley Cell). This circulation system is intimately related to the trade winds, the tropical rainbelts, the subtropical deserts, and the jet streams | |||
| CR3 | 1758 | C. Linnaeus: Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis 1 (10th ed.). Stockholm, Sweden: Laurentius Salvius, pp. [1–4], 824 pages (1758) | 80 |
| The publication is one of the major publications of the Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. The first edition of the book was printed 1735. The tenth edition (1758) is considered the starting point of zoological nomenclature | |||
| CR4 | 1798 | T.R. Malthus: An essay on the principle of population. In Oxford World’s Classics reprint. Printed for J. Johnson, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, London, UK (1798) | 71 |
| The book was first published in 1798 under the alias Joseph Johnson. The author Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) stated that sooner or later population will be checked by famine and disease, leading to what is known as a Malthusian catastrophe | |||
| CR5 | 1847 | C. Bergmann: Über die Verhältnisse der Wärmeökonomie der Thiere zu ihrer Grösse. In: Göttinger Studien, 1. Abt., 595–708 (1847) | 206 |
| The paper by the German biologist Carl Bergmann (1814–1865) describes what has been named Bergmann’s rule: A principle that states that populations and species of larger size are found in colder environments, and species of smaller size are found in warmer regions | |||
| CR6 | 1859 | C. Darwin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. Murray, London, UK (1859) | 292 |
| This seminal publication by Charles Darwin (1809–1882) is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. The book attracted widespread interest upon its publication and generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion until present | |||
| CR7 | 1884 | H.F. Blanford: On the connexion of the Himalaya snowfall with dry winds and seasons of drought in India. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 37(232–234), 3–22 (1884). doi: 10.1098/rspl.1884.0003 | 107 |
| Henry Francis Blanford (1834–1893) was a British meteorologist who made long-term weather forecasts using the link between snow in the Himalayas and rainfall in the rest of India. Using this method, he was able to predict a deficient monsoon in 1885 | |||
| CR8 | 1896 | S. Arrhenius: On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground. Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science Series 5(41), 237–276 (1896) | 311 |
| Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) was the first scientist who calculated how changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. He predicted that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels were large enough to cause global warming. His prediction of a global temperature rise through doubling the carbon dioxide concentration is close to recent predictions. Until around 1950, experts refused the hypothesis because they found that he had grossly oversimplified the climate system | |||
| CR9 | 1899 | T.C. Chamberlin: An attempt to frame a working hypothesis on the cause of glacial periods on an atmospheric basis. Journal of Geology 7, 545–584, 667–685, 751–787 (1899) | 111 |
| Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin (1843–1928) was an influential American geologist. In his 1899 paper he proposed the possibility that changes in climate could result from changes in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide—thereby supporting the theory of Arrhenius ( 1896 ) | |||
| CR10 | 1916 | F.E. Clements: Plant succession: An analysis of the development of vegetation. Publication 242 (512 pages), Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, USA (1916) | 125 |
| Frederic Edward Clements (1874–1945) was an American plant ecologist and pioneer in the study of vegetation succession | |||
| CR11 | 1932 | G.T. Walker and E.W. Bliss: World weather V, Memoirs of the Royal Meteorological Society 4(36), 53–84 (1932). http://www.rmets.org/publications/classic-papers | 343 |
| Sir Gilbert Thomas Walker (1868–1958) was a British physicist and statistician. He is best known for his groundbreaking description of the Southern Oscillation, a major phenomenon of global climate, for discovering Walker Circulation, and for greatly advancing the study of climate in general | |||
| CR12 | 1941 | H. Jenny: Factors of soil formation: A system of quantitative pedology. Dover Publications Inc., New York, USA (1965). Originally published: McGraw-Hill, New York, USA (1941) | 354 |
| The monograph by Hans Jenny is an advanced treatise on theoretical soil science and includes a study of soil-forming factors and processes of soil genesis. It is an extension of the first part of the course “Development and morphology of soils” at the College of Agriculture of the University of California | |||
| CR13 | 1941 | M. Milankowic/Milankovitch: Canon of insolation and the ice-age problem (Kanon der Erdbestrahlung und seine Anwendung auf das Eiszeitenproblem). Royal Serbian Academy special publications, Section of Mathematical and Natural Sciences 132, V33, 633 pages, Belgrade, Yugoslavia (1941). English translation by N. Pantic: Canon of insolation and the ice age problem. Alven Global, 636 pages (1998) | 352 |
| Milutin Milankowic/Milankovitch (1879–1958) explained how the earth’s long-term climate changes (in particular the ice ages occurring in the geological past of the earth) are caused by changes in the position of the earth in comparison to the sun, now known as Milankovitch Cycles | |||
| CR14 | 1945 | H.B. Mann: Nonparametric tests against trend. Econometrica 13(3), 245–259 (1945) | 908 |
| The paper by Henry B. Mann discusses tests of randomness against trends | |||
| CR15 | 1948 | C.W. Thornthwaite: An approach toward a rational classification of climate. Geographical Review 38(1), 55–94 (1948) | 1078 |
| The American climatologist and geographer Charles Warren Thornthwaite (1899–1963) devised a moisture based climate classification system (that is still in use worldwide) by monitoring the soil water budget | |||
| CR16 | 1948 | H.L. Penman: Natural evaporation from open water, bare soil and grass. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A—Mathematical and Physical Sciences 193(1032), 120–145 (1948) | 665 |
| In the paper two theoretical approaches to the evaporation from saturated surfaces are outlined | |||
| CR17 | 1950 | J.M. McCrea: On the isotopic chemistry of carbonates and a paleotemperature scale. Journal of Chemical Physics 18(6), 849–857 (1950). doi: 10.1063/1.1747785 | 318 |
| The temperature variation of the fractionation of oxygen in exchange reactions between dissolved carbonate and water and between calcite and water are calculated on theoretical grounds and checked experimentally | |||
| CR18 | 1953 | S. Epstein et al.: Revised carbonate-water isotopic temperature scale. Geological Society of America Bulletin 64(11), 1315–1325 (1953). doi: 10.1130/0016-7606(1953)64%5b1315:RCITS%5d2.0.CO;2 | 621 |
| Samuel Epstein (1919–2001) explored the field of stable isotope geochemistry and studied natural variations in the isotopic abundances of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and silicon, with applications to archeology and climatology | |||
| CR19 | 1957 | G.H. Hutchinson: Population studies: Animal ecology and demography. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 22, 415–427 (1957). Concluding remarks reprinted in: Bulletin of Mathematical Biology 53(1/2), 193–213 (1991) | 656 |
| George Evelyn Hutchinson (1903–1991) is an American ecologist sometimes described as the “father of modern ecology”. He contributed a mathematical theory of population growth to climate research | |||
| CR20 | 1961 | H. Craig: Isotopic variations in meteoric waters. Science 133(346), 1702–1703 (1961). doi: 10.1126/science.133.3465.1702 | 489 |
| The paper reports how the relationship between deuterium and oxygen-18 concentrations in natural meteoric waters from many parts of the world has been determined with a mass spectrometer | |||
| CR21 | 1961 | H. Stommel: Thermohaline convection with 2 stable regimes of flow. Tellus 13(2), 224–230 (1961) | 406 |
| The paper deals with the thermohaline ocean circulation. In contrast to wind-driven currents, the thermohaline circulation is part of the ocean circulation, which is driven by density differences | |||
| CR22 | 1963 | E.N. Lorenz: Deterministic non-periodic flow. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 20(2), 130–141 (1963). doi: 10.1175/1520-0469(1963)020%3c0130:DNF%3e2.0.CO;2 | 493 |
| Edward Norton Lorenz (1917– 2008) was an American mathematician, meteorologist, and a pioneer of chaos theory. He introduced the strange attractor notion and coined the term “butterfly effect”, which is most important for the basic limits of weather forecasting | |||
| CR23 | 1964 | W. Dansgaard: Stable isotopes in precipitation. Tellus 16(4), 436–468 (1964) | 1337 |
| The paper is most-important for the reconstruction of the past climate based on ice core samples. Willi Dansgaard (1922–2011) was the first scientist to demonstrate that measurements of the trace isotopes deuterium and oxygen-18 in accumulated glacier ice could be used as an indicator of past climate | |||
| CR24 | 1965 | W.C. Palmer: Meteorological drought. Research paper no. 45, U.S. Department of Commerce & Office of Climatology, Weather Bureau, February 1965 (58 pages). http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/drought/docs/palmer.pdf | 767 |
| The American meteorologist Wayne Palmer published the so-called Palmer drought index as a measurement of dryness based on recent precipitation and temperature. A highly topical work in view of the increasing dryness, e.g. in the western part of the USA | |||
| CR25 | 1965 | J.L. Monteith: Evaporation and environment. Symposium of the Society for Experimental Biology 19, 205–234 (1965) | 637 |
| The paper deals with evaporation of plants/leaves | |||
| CR26 | 1965 | H Craig and L.I. Gordon: Deuterium and oxygen-18 variations in the ocean and the marine atmosphere. In: Stable isotopes in oceanographic studies and paleotemperatures. Editor: E. Tongiorgi, Spoleto, Italy (1965) | 556 |
| This publication is important for measurements of the isotopes deuterium and oxygen-18 as an indicator of paleotemperatures and thereby for the reconstruction of the past climate | |||
| CR27 | 1967 | S. Manabe and R.T. Wetherald: Thermal equilibrium of atmosphere with a given distribution of relative humidity. Journal of Atmospheric Sciences 24(3), 241–259 (1967) | 454 |
| The “Manabe-Wetherald one-dimensional radiative-convective model” is seen as the first realistic atmospheric model, which considers the convection and radiation budget of the atmosphere | |||
| CR28 | 1967 | R.H. MacArthur and E.O. Wilson: The theory of island biogeography. Princeton University Press (203 pages), Princeton, USA (1967) | 440 |
| The authors developed a general theory to explain the facts of island biogeography. Their work provided a new framework to explain patterns in species diversity | |||
| CR29 | 1968 | M.A. Stokes and T.L. Smiley: An introduction to tree-ring dating. University of Chicago Press (73 pages), Chicago, USA (1968) | 705 |
| This monograph introduces the method of dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) based on the analysis of patterns of tree rings. One main area of application of the method is paleoecology (reconstruction of the past climate) | |||
| CR30 | 1968 | P.K. Sen: Estimates of regression coefficient based on Kendalls tau. Journal of the American Statistical Association 63(324), 1379–1389 (1968). doi: 10.1080/01621459.1968.10480934 | 624 |
| A simple and robust estimator of β based on Kendall’s rank correlation tau is studied and presented | |||
| CR31 | 1968 | G. Hardin: The tragedy of the commons. Science 162(3859), 1243–1248 (1968). doi: 10.1126/science.162.3859.1243 | 410 |
| The paper by Garrett Hardin is based upon an essay by a Victorian economist on the effects of unregulated grazing on common land and denotes a situation where individuals acting independently and rationally according to each’s self-interested behaviour contrary to the common interests of the whole group | |||
| CR32 | 1969 | J. Bjerknes: Atmospheric teleconnections from equatorial pacific. Monthly Weather Review 97(3), 163–172 (1969). doi: 10.1175/1520-0493(1969)097%3c0163:ATFTEP%3e2.3.CO;2 | 634 |
| Jacob Bjerknes helped toward an understanding of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). He suggested that a weakening of the east–west temperature difference can disrupt trade winds, resulting in increasingly warm water toward the east (see also Walker & Bliss, 1932) | |||
| CR33 | 1969 | S. Manabe: Climate and ocean circulation I: Atmospheric circulation and hydrology of earth’s surface. Monthly Weather Review 97(11), 739–774 (1969) | 498 |
| The paper outlines how the effect of the hydrology of the earth’s surface can be incorporated into a numerical model of the general circulation of the atmosphere. | |||
| CR34 | 1969 | M.I. Budyko: Effect of solar radiation variations on climate of earth. Tellus 21(5), 611–619 (1969) | 458 |
| From the analysis of observation data, the paper shows that variations of the mean temperature of the earth can be explained by the variation of solar radiation, arriving at the earth’s surface | |||
| CR35 | 1970 | J.E. Nash and J.V. Sutcliffe: River flow forecasting through conceptual models part I—A discussion of principles. Journal of Hydrology 10(3), 282–290 (1970). | 1332 |
| The principles governing the application of the conceptual model technique to river flow forecasting are discussed. The necessity for a systematic approach to the development and testing of the model is explained and some preliminary ideas are suggested |
For each reference (CR), a sequential number (No), the corresponding reference publication year (RPY), and the number of cited references (NCR) within the climate change related publication set are listed. Furthermore, a short comment is added to each reference, that explains the content of the cited work and its relation to climate change research