Current Post: Professor and Director of the Tyndall Centre

Room Number: Zicer 1.10

Telephone: 01603 592840 (+44 1603 592840)

Fax: 01603 591327 (+44 1603 591327)

Email: c.lequere@uea.ac.uk

Publications: EPrints Digital Repository

Research Interests

The interactions between marine biogeochemistry and climate for time scales going from one to several hundred thousand years; the role of the marine carbon cycle; the role of marine ecosystems for CO₂ and climate.


Biography

For over 15 years, I have 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). My 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 my research, I try 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.

My work has taken me through various universities and research institutes across the world. I am originally Canadian, but I did my 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. My professional activities include several contributions to the assessments of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. I co-ordinate 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., Rödenbeck, C., Buitenhuis, E.T., Conway, T.J., Langenfelds, R., Gomez, A., Labuschagne, C., Ramonet, M., Nakazawa, T., Metzl, N., Gillett, N., Heimann, M. (2007) Saturation of the Southern Ocean CO2 sink due to climate change. Science 316(5832), 1735-1738. DOI: 10.1126/science.1136188
• 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

Page last updated 25 October 2011