Valerie Masson-Delmotte

Valerie Masson-Delmotte received her PhD from the Ecole Centrale Paris and Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE). She continues to work at LSCE, where she is currently the research director of Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA). Over the past two decades, Masson-Delmotte’s innovative scientific contributions have allowed the community to significantly improve its understanding of the climatic interpretation of ice-core records. She has built strong expertise in processes linking climate parameters and stable isotopes of precipitation using measurements of isotopic composition of present-day precipitation (in areas such as Antarctica, Greenland, Tibet and France) and uses an ensemble of modelling approaches. With the support of her research group and international project partners, Masson-Delmotte has obtained high-resolution measurements spanning the past centuries in order to characterise the power spectrum of climate variability beyond the instrumental period. This has provided an improved understanding of the links between climate parameters and stable isotope records and has enabled the last centuries to be placed in the broader context of current and previous interglacial periods. Her broad scientific expertise and strong collaborations have enabled her leadership in climate science culminating in her appointment as co-chair of IPCC Working Group I for the Sixth Assessment Report since 2015. She has been awarded the Martha Muse prize for her research about Antarctica in 2015 and is the recipient of the European Geophysical Union Milutin Milanković medal in 2020. She recently was awarded the gold medal of IUGG for her important role in ice core records analysis, and in particular isotopic analysis of the snow, as well as her major role in engaging civil society on climate changes.