A Profile of International Climate Change Science in the Past One Hundred Years*

Climate change is one of the most active research fields currently, which has attracted extensive attention from the international community. In order to better understand the development situation and research status of international climate change science, in this paper we took the SSCI and SCI databases as data sources, collected the relevant literatures since 1900 based on the key words related to climate change, and made some statistics and analysis of the literatures of the past one hundred years to reveal the development process of climate change research as well as the development and evolution of its research topics and hot spots. The results showed that the climate change research began in the late 18 th century and early 19 th century, and the academic debate about global warming and global cooling started in the early 1970s. The international programs and projects led by a range of international organizations and intergovernmental bodies have contributed significantly to the rapid development of climate change research. The United States and the United Kingdom have long been the core countries of climate change research. The proportion of Chinese papers has risen rapidly in the last decade. The intensity and scope of scientific research cooperation are constantly expanding. Current research focuses on climate model/modeling, climate simulation, climate policy, climate sensitivity, climate change impacts, climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation, and rate of climate change.