A letter was published in Science on 5 July 2013 (vol. 341) by HAN Qifei, a Ph.D student in Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences (XIEG). Nowadays, climate change is widely accepted as one of the most pressing issues facing society on a global basis. However, as illustrated by the author in the letter, the history of the scientific discovery of climate change began in the early 19th century, but the calculations were disputed at that time. Many other theories of climate change were advanced and less attention was paid to the global warming issue. Therefore, in this letter, HAN Qifei proposed that if the global warming effects were confirmed and proper adaption strategies were carried out as early as it was discovered, the climate change history would be rewritten.
HAN Qifei got her master's degree from University of Twente, Netherlands in 2012. After that, she follows Professors CHEN Xi and LUO Geping from XIEG on the National Basic Research Program of China (2009CB825105). In the project, HAN Qifei mainly concentrates on modeling the effects of land use and climate change on the carbon cycle of terrestrial ecosystem with ecological model. During this time, she had a new understanding of the history and consequences of global warming. In May 2013, when Science released the "NextGen VOICES" survey, HAN Qifei mentioned in her letter that if scientists didn't underestimate the global warming issue in early 19th century, climate change consequence would be different from the current situation.
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals. According to the Journal Citation Reports, Science's 2012 impact factor was 31.027.
