Kolbert is currently a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, where she is working on her new project, Under the Glacier: How Ice Shaped Our World and Will Determine Its Future. In this project, Kolbert explores how Earth’s ice ages reveal the powerful feedbacks that shape our planet’s climate, both in the deep past and in our warming future. Her interest in Svante Arrhenius, the Swedish chemist and Stockholm University professor, stems from his pioneering efforts to understand the causes of the ice ages. In doing so, Arrhenius became one of the first scientists to quantify the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — a discovery that laid the foundation for modern climate science.

I became interested in Svante Arrhenius because he set out to explain the ice ages, but ended up ‘discovering’ global warming, 

Kolbert says. “So he’s a key figure in thinking both about the climate of the past and about the climate of the future.”

During her visit, Kolbert met with Professor Emeritus Henning Rodhe to revisit Arrhenius’s original 1896 climate calculations and compare them with today’s models. She also spoke with Gustaf Arrhenius, Svante Arrhenius’s great-grandson, who shared personal reflections and historical context on his great-grandfather’s scientific legacy. Together, these conversations illuminated how ideas first formed in late 19th-century Stockholm continue to resonate in the global effort to understand and respond to climate change.

Kolbert’s research will ultimately culminate in a new book, but along the way, she hopes to share parts of the story in The New Yorker. Her visit highlights how the roots of climate science continue to inspire curiosity, collaboration, and storytelling — from Stockholm to New York and beyond.

Professor Emeritus Henningh Rhode, Director of the Bolin Centre Ilona Riipinen, Elizabeth Kolbert and Gustaf Arrhenius. Photo: Laila Islamovic