Mikhail Budyko

Mikhail Budyko was a Soviet and Russian climatologist whose work on Earth’s heat balance helped establish quantitative study of climate change and human influence on climate.

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Earth's energy budget: The balance between energy Earth receives from the Sun and energy it reflects or emits back into space. Budyko’s climate framework began with accounting for incoming and outgoing planetary energy.
Budyko–Sellers energy-balance model: A one-dimensional climate model balancing incoming solar radiation, outgoing heat, and meridional heat transport. Budyko’s version represents temperature by latitude and allows ice cover to affect absorbed sunlight.
Human impact on climate: Changes in climate caused by human activities, including greenhouse-gas emissions, land use, and aerosol pollution. Budyko examined how industrial activity could alter climate through changes in atmospheric composition and the surface.
William D. Sellers: An American meteorologist who developed an energy-balance climate model independently of Budyko. The parallel models of Sellers and Budyko became foundational approaches to climate energy balance.
Climate sensitivity: The change in global temperature caused by a specified change in radiative forcing. Budyko used energy-balance reasoning to estimate how strongly temperature responds to forcing.
Sellers model: An energy-balance climate model developed by William D. Sellers to study planetary temperature and ice limits. Sellers developed a closely related model independently, enabling comparison with Budyko’s formulation.
Global warming: The long-term rise in Earth’s average surface temperature, primarily driven in recent decades by human greenhouse-gas emissions. His early analyses helped frame the possibility of climate warming from industrial carbon dioxide.
Vladimir Köppen: A Russian-German climatologist known for a climate classification system based on temperature and precipitation. Köppen’s empirical climate geography contrasts with Budyko’s emphasis on physical energy balance.
Albedo: The fraction of incoming radiation reflected by a surface or body. Snow and ice reflect sunlight, linking Budyko’s heat balance to powerful climate feedback.
Meridional heat transport: The transfer of heat between the equator and poles by the atmosphere and ocean. Budyko represented this transport simply to capture latitudinal temperature differences.