Born in Chicago in 1931, he attended Wheaton College and interacted with J. Laurence Kulp, Paul Gast and Karl Turekian. At Wheaton, he met his wife Grace Carder. Broecker then transferred to Columbia University. At Columbia, he worked at the Lamont Geological Observatory with W. Maurice Ewing and Walter Bucher. In 1975, Broecker popularized the term global warming when he published a paper titled: "Climatic Change: Are we on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?"; the phrase had previously appeared in a 1957 newspaper report about Roger Revelle's research. Broecker recently co-wrote an account of climate science with the science journalist, Robert Kunzig. This included a discussion of the work of Broecker's Columbia colleague Klaus Lackner in capturing from the atmosphere—which Broecker believed must play a vital role in reducing emissions and countering global warming. Broecker has been described in the New York Times as a geoengineering pioneer. Broecker had 6 children, 7 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren. His wife Grace E. Broecker died in 2007. They were together for 53 years. Broecker married Elizabeth Clark in 2009. He died of congestive heart failure in New York City on February 18, 2019. Days before his death, he gave a livestreamed video message to his fellow scientists, where he said that humankind was not moving quickly enough to stop global warming and urged the scientific community to "seriously study more extreme solutions to the climate crisis"
Research
Broecker's areas of research include Pleistocenegeochronology, radiocarbon dating and chemical oceanography, including oceanic mixing based on stable and radioisotope distribution. This includes research on the biogeochemical cycles of the element carbon and on the record of climate change contained in polar ice and ocean sediments. Broecker has authored more than 500 journal articles and 17 books. He is perhaps best known for his discovery of the role played by the ocean in triggering the abrupt climate changes which punctuated glacial time, in particular the development and popularization of the idea of a global "ocean conveyor" linking the circulation of the world's oceans. However, his contributions stretch far beyond the "conveyor"; his work is the foundation of carbon cycle science, and his applications of radiocarbon to paleoceanography are landmarks in the field. His work with chemical tracers in the ocean is integral to modern chemical oceanography; indeed, his textbook "Tracers in the Sea", authored with Tsung-Hung Peng, is still cited in the contemporary literature 25 years after its publication. Broecker writes about his research, on mode changes in the thermohaline circulation: "We have clear evidence that different parts of the earth's climate system are linked in very subtle yet dramatic ways. The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth's climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change."
