[1] During his doctorate he spent a year in 1950 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he worked with Jule Charney, John von Neumann and others on the first computerized weather forecast, using ENIAC, the first electronic computer.

Bolin was professor of meteorology at Stockholm University 1961–1990, and involved in international climate research cooperation from the 1960s.

In 1987, the 500-page Brundtland Report which Bolin was involved with contributed to the setting up of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

[5] Bolin is credited with bringing together a diverse range of views among the panel's 3,500 scientists into something resembling a consensus.

[6] The first report led to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the second to the Kyoto Protocol.