Jean Jouzel

The 1997 Milutin Milanković Medal is awarded to Jean Jouzel for his comprehensive studies of ice core data and his unique skill in both reconstructing past climates from ice core analyses and using general circulation models to follow palaeoclimatic tracers.

Jean Jouzel is one of the very few scientists in the world who has an expertise both in data acquisition and in modelling past climates. Since the early 70s, he has participated actively and significantly in the demonstration of the potential of ice cores to reconstruct past climates over the last centuries and millennia up to the last few glacial-interglacial cycles. He is therefore one of the cited pioneers of ice core data analysis. Most of his work about the climatological archives is related to isotopes to reconstruct past temperature changes, accumulation rates, precipitation changes, and desertic and cosmogenic dust. He is presently the chairman of the European Programme which will be in charge of coring and analyzing Antarctic ice over the next 10 years (European Ice Core Project in Antarctica – EPICA). He has also contributed significantly to the analysis of the Greenland ice cores data (as a member of GRIP in particular). He is the first author of the papers extending the climatic record extracted from Antarctica ice cores to more than 300,000 years and of papers discussing rapid climatic changes in ice cores.

He has a skill in using the models of both the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique for studying the cycle of the isotopes of water and the climate response to the insolation forcing and to the changes in greenhouse gases on the geological time scale. This is particularly important to determine the sensitivity of the climate system to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations.

His dual approach to understanding the climate system behaviour (data and modelling) made him a unique expert very often cited and highly associated in papers related to ice cores (more than 100 papers in highly qualified refereed journals since 1973, more than half of them since 1990)

The present and previous positions of Jean Jouzel have been: Co-director of Laboratoire de Modelisation du Climat et de Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Geophysiqui 1 Environnement (CNRS), Grenoble, 1989-1995; Dii Laboratoire de Geochimie Isotopique, CEA-Saclay, 1991; Visiting scientist at Goddard Institute for l Studies, 1983-1984.
The academic distinction, honours and awards presented Jean Jouzel include: Directeur de recherches at the Cor sariat a 1 Energie Atomique, France (1995); Philip J prize in climatology 1992; member of Academia Euri 1990.

Newsletter 63, 32, 1997