The Man Who Predicted Climate Change

Late in 1966, in the sprawling computer lab of the Washington, D.C., office building that housed the United States Weather Bureau, Syukuro Manabe was waiting for a print job to finish. At stake was the fate of the planet. Manabe, who was thirty-five, had come to the U.S. from Japan almost a decade earlier. He managed a team of computer programmers, tasked with building a mathematical simulation of the planet's atmosphere. It had taken years to perfect, and cost millions of dollars. Now the simulation was complete.