Corinne Le Quéré

The 2025 Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky Medal is awarded to Corinne Le Quéré for development of research demonstrating the role of the oceans in the changing global carbon cycle, and leadership in the Global Carbon Project.

As a world-renowned expert on the changing global carbon cycle, Corinne Le Quéré is well deserving of the 2024 Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky Medal.

Le Quéré developed the "Green Ocean" model, which demonstrated the importance of ocean trophic interactions on ocean carbon cycling. In particular, she proposed the use of phytoplankton functional types to deal with the diversity of ecology-environment interactions. These models have been used to explore feedbacks that couple climate and ocean carbon cycles, such as how marine biota influenced glacial/interglacial changes in carbon dioxide, to explain interannual variability in the current ocean carbon sink, and to identify regions of future concern for ocean deoxygenation with continued global warming. Le Quéré was the first to detect a weakening of the Southern Ocean CO2 sink between 1981 and 2004 and relate this to intensifying winds associated with stratospheric ozone depletion and, to a lesser extent, climate change.

By integrating her research with other components of the carbon cycle as a lead author in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th IPCC reports, Le Quéré advanced the general understanding of the carbon cycle and climate. However, the IPCC summarizes the state of the global carbon cycle only every 5 years, while policies to address climate change require more up-to-date information on current trends. Starting in 2004, Le Quéré initiated and co-led (until 2013) the Global Carbon Project, with the vision of providing an annual synthesis of the global carbon budget, including emissions as well as up-to-date estimates of land and ocean carbon exchanges. This peer-reviewed compendium of trends and recent developments in the carbon cycle is an essential resource for researchers and policy makers. Its impact has transformed both science and policy by revealing the details behind the many aspects of the carbon cycle budget. Recently, Le Quéré led the publication of an analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on carbon emissions that also provided a powerful example of the kinds of choices needed to successfully reduce emissions.

Le Quéré directly informs climate policy as the founding chair of the French High Council on Climate and a member of the UK's Committee on Climate Change. She is widely recognised as a leader in carbon cycle science, as evidenced by her many prestigious fellowships, including the UK Royal Society and the European Academy of Science. She remains active in training and mentoring Early Career Scientists through her role in coordinating the SOLAS (Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study) summer school, which has impacted the careers of more than 500 Early Career Scientists.

Corinne Le Quéré combines scientific excellence with the ability to share knowledge in original ways. She has already created new data products and a new culture for communicating climate science. Her latest project is a new tool, ScienceBrief.org, that seeks to open up scientific assessments by making it easier for researchers to show how their peer-reviewed research relates to open questions.