Ferenc Miskolczi

Ferenc Mark Miskolczi, PhD is a Hungarian-born physicist who previously worked for NASA. "As a senior principal scientist he worked on several NASA projects related to atmospheric remote sensing problems and the evaluation of the Earth’s radiation budget." He is the former head of the Institute for Atmospheric Physics in Budapest from 1975 to 1983 and again from 1990 to 1991, as well as a former research assistant in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Maryland.

Research
Miskolczi's primary research is in quantitatively measuring the optical depth of the atmosphere.

HARTCODE
Miskolczi developed and published a long wave radiative absorption Line By Line (LBL) High Resolution Atmospheric Radiance-Transmittance Code (HARTCODE). He modeled downward surface longwave flux against longwave measurements at Sterling VA, accounting for non-uniform dome transmittance., HARTCODE was validated against other LBL codes in a NASA project.

Atmospheric Optical Depth
Based on his quantitative models Miskolczi found very little change in the Planck Weighted Optical Depth from changes in atmospheric CO2 over 61 years. The primary variation is due to atmospheric water. Consequently Miskolczi holds that observed global warming must be due to natural causes. He presented at the International Conference on Climate Change in 2008.

Controversy
Miskolczi proposed a model of climate, which he claims disproves the ability of carbon dioxide to cause global warming. Miskolczi himself said, in his resignation letter ffrom NASA, that "Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results." The methodology of some of his research has been questioned by Rob van Dorland and Piers Forster, by Barton Paul Levenson and by Roy Spencer. Miskolczi's critics have stated that his theory is incorrect in that it predicts that water vapor will decrease in response to carbon dioxide levels increasing, thus counteracting CO2's warming effect. However, according to Tony Eggleton, "Observations show that the water vapor content of the atmosphere is increasing in response to global warming, not reducing."