Professor Corinne Le Quéré CBE FRS

Corinne Le Quéré is a physicist specialised in understanding the carbon cycle and how it interacts with the Earth’s climate. Her original approaches are helping to determine how and why the natural carbon reservoirs are changing, particularly in the Southern Ocean. She spearheaded the development of marine carbon-cycle models with new ways to represent plankton biodiversity and ecology. She also instigated and led for 13 years the annual update of the ’global carbon budget’, an international effort to keep track of global carbon emissions and their fate in the environment.

Corinne is Royal Society Research Professor of Climate Change Science at the University of East Anglia. She authored three assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She Chairs the French Haut conseil pour le climat and is member of the UK Committee on Climate Change, two independent committees that advise their respective Governments on responding to climate change. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2019 for services to climate change science. She received the 2020 Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences and other awards for her contributions to science.

Professional position

  • Professor of Climate Change Science, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia

Subject groups

  • Earth and environmental sciences

    Chemical oceanography, Climate sciences, Geochemistry, Physical oceanography

  • Other

    Science policy, Scientific information provision

Professor Corinne Le Quéré CBE FRS
Elected 2016