The Blaise Pascal Medal in Earth and Environmental Sciences of the European Academy of Sciences (http://www.eurasc.org) has been awarded to Jean-Pierre Gattuso, Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche (CNRS/UPMC), in recognition of his outstanding studies on ocean acidification.
The Medal will be distributed during a ceremony in Porto at the end of November. Dr Gattuso has also been elected as a member of the Academy.The European Academy of Sciences (EURASC) is a non-profit non-governmental, independent organization of the most distinguished scholars and engineers performing forefront research and the development of advanced technologies. It is based in Liège (Belgium) and comprises 650 members, including 65 Nobel and Field medal laureates, from 63 countries.
European Academy of Sciences, 4 November 2014. Web site.
This is a beautiful and much merited acknowledgement of the initiative and ongoing work of Jean-Pierre Gattuso, and by extension of all his colleagues. It is particularily apposite in the light of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report’s own acknowledgement of the centrality of ocean change (pH and carbonate chemistry, warming and expansion, stratification and eutrophication, importance for human livelihoods etc) in weighing up the present and future state of the planet’s ocean/atmosphere system. We climate campaigners depend on such work as that achieved by Jean-Paul, and wish him further success and public acknowledgement.
Mike Koefman, outreach worker, Planet Hydrogen, Manchester M4 7HR, UK
I thank Mike Koefman for his kind words. It is very rewarding that community efforts are useful. However, I would like to highlight the fact that many synthesis and outreach activities are collective efforts. The coverage of ocean acidification in IPCC AR5, involved no less than 14 lead authors and review editors (there were additional contributing authors not listed here):
– Working Group I: L. Bopp, K. Caldeira, R. Feely, C. Heinze, Y. Nojiri, C. Sabine
– Working Group II: P. Brewer, V. J. Fabry, J.-P. Gattuso, O. Hoegh-Guldberg, Y. Nojiri, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Schmidt, C. Turley
The outreach and dissemination activities are led by the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre but other organisations do contribute a lot. For example, BIOACID, UKOA, OCB, NOAA and many others.
I really hope that this collective effort and the great spirit of international collaboration will continue as we need to scale-up research efforts to include long-term experiments, effects of multiple drivers, and investigations of communities and ecosystems.
Jean-Pierre Gattuso