André Berger

André Berger is currently ordinary professor at the Catholic University of Louvain in Louvain-La-Neuve (UCL) where he lectures on meteorology and climate dynamics.

His university training was in mathematics from UCL and Meteorology from M.I.T. He was received Doctor of Sciences from UCL in 1973 with a thesis on the astronomical theory of paleoclimates. After his return from USA as a CRB graduate fellow of the Belgian Educational Foundation, he started his career of professor at UCL. He was then Visiting Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel where he lectured at the International Post Graduate training Course on Fundamental and Applied Quaternary Geology (1982–1993) and at the University of Liège for a Maîtrise en Géologie des Terrains Superficiels (1985–1993). He was and still is invited to lecture on paleoclimate modelling in different European universities. He is doctor honoris causa from the University of Aix-Marseille III, the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse and the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons. He was head of the Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics Georges Lemaître from 1978–2001.

His main research is about modeling climatic changes at the geological and at the century time scales. He has made original contributions to the astronomical theory of paleoclimates aiming to explain the recurrence of glacial-interglacial cycles from the long-term variations of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The climate model that he has developed with his team is used for simulating the long-term climatic variations over the last millions of years, the response of the climate system to human activities as well as the possible impact of such man’s induced perturbations on the natural course of climate at the geological time scale. He is a cited pioneer of the interdisciplinary study of climate dynamics and past climate history. André Berger is the author of “Le Climat de la Terre, un passé pour quel avenir?”. He has edited 10 books on climatic variations and has published more than 150 papers on this subject.

André Berger is Honorary President of the European Geosciences Union and is fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He was chairman of both the International Climate and the Paleoclimate Commissions and President of the European Geophysical Society. He serves on several national and international scientific committees dealing with climate and global change. He is, in particular, member of the scientific council of the European Environment Agency and of different national academies.

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