The Earth's climate has always changed, but why is the Anthropocene an unprecedented change ?

Abstract

This seminar will illustrate how modeling the Earth system helps us to understand the climatic changes our planet has undergone over its long history. In particular, we'll look at the principles that regulate temperatures and the hydrological cycle over billions, millions and hundreds of thousands of years, making it possible to sustain life on Earth. However, mankind has become one of the major factors in climate change, with the characteristic that its effects on the environment are dazzling and ultimately threaten mankind. In this lecture, we will compare long-term, natural changes with the anthropogenic changes underway.

Gilles Ramstein

Gilles Ramstein is Director of Research at LSCE. He is an expert on past, present and future climate issues. He has edited several popular books on climate, such as Voyage à travers les climats de la Terre (2015) published by Odile Jacob, and more recently Le Climat en 100 questions (2020) published by Tallandier, with Sylvestre Huet. He also coordinated thetwo-volume   Paleoclimatology (2020) published by Springer Verlag, with over fifty authors. His specialty is climate modeling, mainly for past periods, but also on health aspects and vector-borne disease dispersion for the ^21st century. He also hosts a podcast " Le Climat en Questions " on climate issues in the broadest sense, with fifty episodes already produced. He was also behind and heavily involved in training journalists through theonlineMaster  2" Climate and Media ".

References

• Voyage à travers les climats de la terre, 2015, published by Odile Jacob ;
• 100 questions sur le climat, co-written with journalist Sylvestre Huet, Tallandier edition, 2020 ;
• In Relief magazine, to be published in May, contribution to article : " L'océan, grand ordonnateur du climat" ;
• 54 opus of a podcast entitled " Le climat en question " C&G. Ramstein, S. Huet.