Keeping a close watch on the climate By improving their understanding of how carbon sinks work and the amount of carbon they can store, climatologists can make a more accurate assessment of climate change and its effects on the most vulnerable environments. Climatology explained This book is the culmination of a request by the President of CNRS to the National Scientific Research Committee. Written by more First global measurement of the forest than 100 specialists, it presents a wide-ranging panorama of the methods and tools used to measure, understand and model past, carbon sink present and future climates and predict their evolution. It thus By absorbing large quantities of CO , the forest biomass helps to provides clues for a wide audience to apprehend the reality and 2 prevent the build-up of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. challenges of climate change. A worldwide compilation of forest inventory data has for the first time provided a numerical value for this massive carbon sink. Le climat à découvert. Outils et méthodes en recherche Between 1990 and 2007, the world’s forests captured 2.4 billion climatique, by Catherine Jeandel and Rémy Mosseri (Eds.), tons of carbon, which is about one third of the CO produced by CNRS Éditions, 2011 2 combustion of fossil fuels. However, the carbon budget of tropical forests is virtually zero, since at such latitudes the absorption of CO2 by intact forests is unfortunately offset by high levels of deforestation. Ocean currents are substantial Science Express online July 2011 carbon sinks The oceans sequester carbon in two different ways, one biological and the other, physical, related to ocean currents. Using data collected during four oceanographic campaigns carried out in the North Atlantic, researchers were able to determine the respective share of these two processes in ocean carbon sequestration in this region. Against all odds, their analysis showed that the physical pump was around a hundred times more efficient than the biological pathway. It remains to be established how the respective roles of these mechanisms will evolve in the current context of climate change. Journal of Geophysical Research February 2011 Brilliant glaciologist rewarded The prestigious 2011 Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union’s ‘Division on Climate: Past, Present and Future’ was awarded to Robert Delmas, senior researcher emeritus at CNRS, for his pioneering scientific research. Delmas is the founder of glaciochemistry, a discipline dedicated to the study of soluble impurities in polar snow and ice, and was the first to show, in 1980, that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were lower in glacial periods than in warm periods. 46 A year at CNRS 2011
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