KRINNER Gerhard

Gerhard Krinner is research director at the Institut des Géosciences de l'Environnement (IGE) of the CNRS. For more than 20 years, Gerhard Krinner has been working on the climate of the polar regions. He is particularly interested in surface processes at high northern latitudes (involving snow and ground freezing) and the mass balance of ice caps. These two aspects of polar climate are of global importance: the mass balance of continental ice caps (particularly Greenland and Antarctica) strongly determines the evolution of global sea level, while the possible future thawing of large portions of frozen ground in high latitudes (in Siberia and North America) may amplify future climate change through increased CO2 and methane emissions. Gerhard Krinner uses digital climate models to study past, present and future polar climate. He participated in the work of the IPCC 5th report as lead author for the chapter "Long-term climate change" and is currently chair of the Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) project, one of the four main pillars of the World Climate Research Programme led mainly by the World Meteorological Organization.