Corinne Le Quere

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For over 15 years, Dr. Le Quere has developed numerical models and analysed databases of the global ocean to try to understand and quantify the very large oceanic sink for CO₂ (which takes up 25% of the CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere from human activities). Her research focuses on processes which lead to important changes in this oceanic CO₂ sink, such as large-scale variations in ocean circulation or shifts in the marine ecosystem composition. With her research, she tries to foresee what will be the consequences of the projected increase in atmospheric CO₂ and resulting changes in climate for the efficiency of the oceanic CO₂ sink.

Her work has taken her through various universities and research institutes across the world. She is originally Canadian, but she did her Ph.D. at the University Paris VI and worked for several years at Princeton University in the US and at the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany. Her professional activities include several contributions to the assessments of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. She co-ordinates the International SOLAS summer schools and instigated the Dynamic Green Ocean Project, and international project which aims to develop a more comprehensive model of the oceanic compartment of the Earth system.

Significant Publications

Le Quéré, C., S. P. Harrison, I. Colin Prentice, E. T. Buitenhuis, O. Aumont, L. Bopp, H. Claustre, L. Cotrim da Cunha, R. Geider, X. Giraud, C. Klaas, K. E. Kohfeld, L. Legendre, M. Manizza, T. Platt, R. B. Rivkin, S. Sathyendranath, J. Uitz, A. J. Watson, and D. Wolf-Gladrow, Ecosystem dynamics based on plankton functional types for global ocean biogeochemistry models. Global Change Biology, 11, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2005.1004.x, pp 2016-2040. 

Kohfeld K., C. Le Quéré, S. P. Harrison and B. Anderson, (2005). Role of marine biology for glacial-interglacial CO2 cycles. Science, 308, 74-78. DOI: 10.1126/science.1105375

Raupach, M.R., Marland, G., Ciais, P., Le Quéré, C., Canadell, J.G., Klepper, G., Field, C.B. (2007) Global and regional drivers of accelerating CO2 emissions. PNAS 104(24), 10288-10293. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0700609104 

Bindoff, N., J. Willebrand, V. Artale, A. Cazenave, J. Gregory, S. Gulev, K. Hanawa, C. Le Quéré, S. Levitus, Y. Nojiri, C. Shum, L. Talley and A. Unnikrishnan. (in press) Observations: Oceanic climate change and sea level. In Climate Change:The Scientific Basis, the contribution of WGI of the IPCC to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, eds. S. Solomon, D. Qin, and M. Manning, in press.

House, J.I. , I.C. Prentice and , C. Le Quéré, 2002. Impacts of reforestation and deforestation on atmospheric CO₂. Global Change Biology, 8, 1-6. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2486.2002.00536.x

Click here for Dr. Le Quere's CV.