The joint recipients of the 1997 Volvo Environment Prize are Dr. Syukuro Manabe and Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, whose pioneering work over several decades has helped us to understand one of the critical aspects of human activity – the climate of the past and present and its effect on the life of future generations. Their research, related to the greenhouse effect – the increased warming of the globe caused by various gases released into the atmosphere by human activities – has been instrumental in finding out how that heating translates into future changes in regional climate.