Climate scientist Wallace Smith Broecker, who popularised the term "global warming" has passed away in New York.
Eighty-seven-year-old Columbia University professor breathed his last at a New York City hospital on Monday.
Broecker brought "global warming" into common use with a 1975 paper that correctly predicted rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would lead to pronounced warming.
Broecker was also first to recognize what he called the Ocean Conveyor Belt, a global system of ocean currents circulating water and nutrients. He joined Columbia's faculty in 1959 and was known in science circles as the "Grandfather of Climate Science". (AIR)