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 under-stand 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.