WAGNON Patrick

High mountain guide and field glaciologist, Patrick Wagnon began his career in tropical South America. During his thesis, which he obtained in 1999, he contributed to a better understanding of the relationship between climate and the current evolution of glaciers, taking the example of a glacier in Bolivia. In 2002, he oriented his career towards the Himalayas, an immense mountain range then unknown. With his colleagues, he initiated series of mass balance measurements and meteorological monitoring at altitude on glaciers in India since 2002 and in Nepal since 2007. Today, these series are the longest in the Himalayas, and the data are widely used by the scientific community. For the sake of transmission, he has always worked in partnership with local institutions. It is in this capacity that he lived for four years in Nepal and trained French, Indian and Nepalese doctoral students. Today, he directs a joint international laboratory which brings together French and Nepalese scientists with complementary skills. The goal of this laboratory is to better quantify precipitation in the high mountains of Asia and to understand and predict the evolution of glaciers in this region of the world.