Masson-Delmotte was born 29 October 1971 to two English teachers, and she grew up in Nancy, in the northeast of France.[2] She completed a Diploma of Advanced studies in Engineering with honours at the Ecole Centrale Paris in 1993.[3] She also received her PhD in from the same institution in 1996, in fluid physics and transfers.[3] Her doctoral thesis was "Climate simulation of the Holocene means using general circulation models of the atmosphere; Impacts of parameterization”.[3]
Career and impact
After her PhD, Masson-Delmotte began working as a researcher at the Commissariat for Atomic Energy (CEA), specifically the Laboratory of Climate and the Environmental Sciences.[2] She became head of a paleoclimate group in 2010, head of a research group in 1998, and completed her habilitation in 2004.[3] Since 2008, she has been the Research Director/Senior Scientist at CEA.[1][3] Her research includes water vapour monitoring and combines past climate variability (ice cores, tree rings) with simulations, to address current climate models.[4]
Masson-Delmotte served on numerous national and international projects including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Since 2014, she has been a member of the French Research Strategic Council.[4]
She has published extensively, including several books for the general public, as well as children's books.[5][6]
In October 2015, she was elected co-chair of Working Group 1 (WGI) of the IPCC, which is the group that "examines the physical science basis".[2] She was the co-ordinating lead author of the paleoclimate chapter in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) cycle.[4] Masson-Delmotte led IPCC's Working Group One's (WGI) activities for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) cycle,[7] a position she held until the election of a new IPCC bureau for the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) cycle.[8]
Awards and honours
Masson-Delmotte won the Martha T. Muse prize for contribution to Antarctic science in 2015.[9] She also won the French-Austrian Prize Amédée in 2014[10] and the Irène Joliot-Curie prize for the woman scientist of the year in 2013.[11] She won the prize of scientific excellence UVSQ in 2011,[10] and the Descartes Prize of the European Commission for transnational collaborative research: EPICA in 2008.[12] She was associated with the Nobel Peace Prize 2007 awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC.[13] She was co-awarded the Grand Prix Etienne Roth du CEA from the French Academy of Sciences in 2002.[3] In 2019 she was awarded the 2020 Milutin Milankovic Medal by the European Geosciences Union.[14]
In 2020 Masson-Delmotte was awarded an honorary doctorate by Utrecht University for her work on climate science.[15] That same year, Valerie also received, along with her partner Mª del Carmen Domínguez, the Prix Diálogo, for her research on the environment and climate change.[16] For 2023 she received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award.[17]
Masson-Delmotte, Valérie, M. Schulz, A. Abe-Ouchi, J. Beer, A. Ganopolski, J.F. González Rouco, E. Jansen, K. Lambeck, J. Luterbacher, T. Naish, T. Osborn, B. Otto-Bliesner, T. Quinn, R. Ramesh, M. Rojas, X. Shao and A. Timmermann, 2013: Information from Paleoclimate Archives. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
Hansen, James, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, David Beerling, Robert Berner, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Mark Pagani, Maureen Raymo, Dana L. Royer, and James C. Zachos. "Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?." arXiv preprint arXiv:0804.1126 (2008).
Loulergue, Laetitia, Adrian Schilt, Renato Spahni, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Thomas Blunier, Bénédicte Lemieux, Jean-Marc Barnola, Dominique Raynaud, Thomas F. Stocker, and Jérôme Chappellaz. "Orbital and millennial-scale features of atmospheric CH4 over the past 800,000 years." Nature 453, no. 7193 (2008): 383–386.
Jouzel, Jean, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Olivier Cattani, Gabrielle Dreyfus, Sonia Falourd, Georg Hoffmann, Bénédicte Minster et al. "Orbital and millennial Antarctic climate variability over the past 800,000 years." Science 317(5839) (2007): 793–796.
Masson-Delmotte, Valérie, M. Kageyama, P. Braconnot, S. Charbit, G. Krinner, C. Ritz, E. Guilyardi et al. "Past and future polar amplification of climate change: climate model intercomparisons and ice-core constraints." Climate Dynamics 26, no. 5 (2006): 513–529.
Siegenthaler, Urs, Thomas F. Stocker, Eric Monnin, Dieter Lüthi, Jakob Schwander, Bernhard Stauffer, Dominique Raynaud et al. "Stable carbon cycle–climate relationship during the late Pleistocene." Science 310, no. 5752 (2005): 1313–1317.
Masson Valérie, Françoise Vimeux, Jean Jouzel, Vin Morgan, Marc Delmotte, Philippe Ciais, Claus Hammer et al. "Holocene climate variability in Antarctica based on 11 ice-core isotopic records." Quaternary Research 54, no. 3 (2000): 348–358.
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