French glaciologist Claude Lorius, one of the first to have established the role of carbon dioxide (CO2) in global warming, died Tuesday at the age of 91, AFP learned Thursday from his publisher and of a CNRS researcher close to him. This pioneer of polar expeditions, who will have lived a total of six years in Antarctica since his first mission in 1957, helped found climatology, reconstructing the climate of the past through the study of air bubbles trapped in carrots. of ice over millennia.
“Editions Arthaud, regret to announce the death of their author Claude Lorius”, who had recounted his life as a glaciologist in his “Memories saved from the ice”. “Claude Lorius died on Tuesday morning” in Burgundy, confirmed to AFP CNRS paleoclimatologist Jérôme Chappellaz, researcher and former collaborator of Claude Lorius, who is close to the family. “Claude was also of the caliber of adventurers in polar exploration,” greeted explorer Jean-Louis Etienne, in a video posted on Twitter.
Boreholes
Born in Besançon on February 27, 1932, Claude Lorius, barely graduated, had come across an ad: “Students wanted to participate in the International Geophysical Year” in Antarctica. He will remain for a year, in 1957, in extreme conditions, at the Charcot base, on this white continent where he will never stop wanting to return. Becoming a researcher at the CNRS in 1961, he returned to Adélie Land in 1965. There, he decided to take an interest in air bubbles in the ice, as many atmospheric samples that could provide information on interactions with the climate.
As early as the 1970s, he began to suspect the role of human activities in global warming. In 1977-1978, after three years of scouting and ten of preparation, he and his team began deep drilling of Dome C (south-east Antarctica). They dig up to 900 m, a feat allowing them to retrace 40,000 years of climatic history. In 1984, a mission to the Russian base in Vostok (1,500 km inside Antarctica) enabled him to go up ice 150,000 years old.
CNRS Gold Medal
Being able to reconstruct a complete climatic cycle, he observes that the temperature curves follow regular rhythms, before racing at the same time as those of CO2 since the middle of the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution. These results will be published in 1987 in the journal Nature. The researcher, member of the Academy of Sciences, will then work to mobilize for the fight against global warming. In 2002, he received the CNRS gold medal with his colleague and friend Jean Jouzel. The Oscar-winning director Luc Jacquet dedicated a film to him, “The Ice and the Sky”.