French glaciologist Claude Lorius, who played an important role in proving that human activities cause global warming, has died at the age of 91. It was announced that Lorius died on Tuesday in the Burgundy region of France.
One of the pioneers of glaciology, Lorius visited Greenland and Antarctica 22 times in his lifetime.
During his voyage of exploration in Antarctica in 1965, while looking at ice cubes in his drink, he discovered how human activities have warmed the Earth.
While continuing his education at the University of Besançon in France, Lorius dreamed of becoming a football player like his brother.
Until one day, at the age of 23, she saw an advertisement on the university campus saying “We are looking for young researchers to participate in scientific excursions organized for the International Geophysical Year”.
With this call that changed his life, Lorius, who stepped into glacier science, which was still a narrow field that day, said in an interview 60 years later, “All I could think of was the possibility of adventure.” he would say.
On his first Antarctic voyage in 1955, he saw temperatures drop to -40 degrees Celsius.
Despite this, Lorius and two others lived on the icy continent for two years, surviving with limited stock and a malfunctioning radio.
On every polar expedition to the continent, he has been more fascinated by the mysteries of Antarctica.
Lorius made a discovery in 1965 by collecting ice samples from the continent and dropping them into a whiskey glass.
Half a century later, he described that day as follows:
“After drilling deep in the glacier one evening, we returned to our trailer and put the ice cubes we had brought from the deep into the whiskey we were drinking.
“When I saw the air bubbles in our glasses, I had the idea that these were samples of atmosphere trapped in ice.”
Realizing the scientific potential of analyzing trapped air in the glacier, Loruis decided to examine the ice cores. Ice cores are samples that have been extracted from the ice and serve as frozen time capsules.
As Lorius pierced through the ice, he moved from the present to the past and reached the “ices of the first Ice Age”.
His research on air bubbles trapped in ice was published in 1987.
His research showed that the rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which varied slightly from period to period, increased abruptly after the Industrial Revolution and increased temperatures.
Lorius’ internationally acclaimed and groundbreaking work in glacial science paved the way for scientists to examine the 160,000-year-old glacial record.
The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) said the study “leads no doubt” that global warming is caused by human activities.
After this important discovery, Loruis became one of the pioneers in the field of climate change and in 1988 became the first expert of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He received the CNRS gold medal in 2002 along with his colleague Jean Jouzel.
He became the only French scientist to receive the Blue Planet Award, known as the “Nobel Prize for Ecology”.