Canal-U

André Berger is Master of Science in Meteorology from M.I.T. (1971) and Doctor of Science from the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) (1973). He is Professor Emeritus, was Ordinary Professor and head of the Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics Georges Lemaître (1978-2001) at the Catholic University of Louvain where he lectured on meteorology and climate dynamics. He is doctor honoris causa from the University of Aix-Marseille III, the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse and the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons. He was C.R.B. graduate fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation (1970-71) and professor at the Vrij Universiteit Brussel and Université de Liège. He has been invited to lecture at 221 symposia and workshops and to give 125 seminars in different universities. He has been responsible for 77 research grants. He is member of the Academia Europaea, foreign member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, membre associé étranger de l’Académie des Sciences de Paris, membre de l'Académie Nationale de l'Air et de l'Espace, membre de l’Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique, foreign member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, membre étranger de la Société royale du Canada and associate of the Royal Astronomical Society (London). He received the European Latsis Prize of the European Science Foundation in 2001, the Prix quinquennal A. De Leeuw-Damry-Bourlart of the Belgian National Funds for Scientific Research for 1991-1995, the Norbert Gerbier-Mumm International Award from the World Meteorological Organization in 1994, and the Milutin Milankovitch Medal from the European Geophysical Society in 1994.André Berger was chairman of both the International Climate and the International Paleoclimate Commissions. He was president of the European Geophysical Society and is Honorary President of the European Geo-Sciences Union. He is fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

References :

· Berger, A., 1977. Support for the astronomical theory of cli­matic change. Nature, 268, 44-45.

· Berger, A., 1978. Long-term variations of caloric insolation resulting from the Earth's orbital elements. Quaternary Research, 9, 139-167..

· Berger, A., 1978. Long-term variations of daily insolation and Quaternary Climatic Changes. Journal of Atmospheric Science, 35(12), 2362-2367..

· Berger, A., 1988. Milankovitch Theory and Climate. Review of Geophysics, 26(4), pp. 624-657..

· Shackleton N.J., Berger A., Peltier W.R., 1990. An alternative astronomical calibration of the lower Pleistocene timescale based on ODP Site 677, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Earth sciences, 81, 251

Michael E. Mann is a member of the Penn State University faculty, holding joint positions in the Departments of Meteorology and Geosciences, and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (ESSI). He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC). Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research focuses on the application of statistical techniques to understanding climate variability and climate change from both empirical and climate model-based perspectives. Current areas of research include paleoclimate data synthesis and statistical climate reconstruction using climate ``proxy'' data networks, and model/data comparisons aimed at understanding the long-term behavior of the climate system and its relationship with possible external (including anthropogenic) ``forcings'' of climate. Other areas of active research include development of statistical methods for climate signal detection, and investigations of the response of geophysical and ecological systems to climate variability and climate change scenarios.Dr. Mann was a Lead Author on the "Observed Climate Variability and Change" chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report and in 2007 shared the Nobel Peace Prize with other IPCC authors. Dr. Mann has been organizing committee chair for the National Academy of Sciences 'Frontiers of Science' and has served as a committee member or advisor for other National Academy of Sciences panels. He served as editor for the 'Journal of Climate' and has been a member of numerous international and U.S. scientific advisory panels and steering groups. Dr. Mann has been the recipient of several fellowships and prizes, including selection as one of the 50 leading visionaries in Science and Technology by Scientific American, the outstanding scientific publication award of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and recognition by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) for notable citation of his refereed scientific research. He is author of more than 100 peer-reviewed and edited publications, and recently co-authored with colleague Lee Kump the book “Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming”. He is also a co-founder and avid contributor to the award-winning science website “RealClimate.org”.His work in the area of global climate change has been widely described in the popular media, including ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN news programs, Time Magazine, US News and World Report, NPR, The Economist, BBC, USA Today, and feature stories in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other U.S. and international news publications.

· For more information, including electronic versions of publication and descriptions of current research projects, please refer to his website:
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html

Joel Guiot, is directeur de recherche CNRS in the "Centre Europeen de Recherche et d'Enseignement en Géosciences de l'Environnement", CEREGE, in Aix-en-Provence (France). He is also the director of the Research Federation ECCOREV which is a group a more than 36 laboratories in various domain of sciences and social sciences related to environment. His main research domain is paleoclimatology, particularly climate reconstruction in continental areas. His main contribution to that field was (1) to show how insolation fluctuations (Milankovitch cycles) influence vegetation and climate (paper published by Nature in 1989), (2) to help to the pollen database development which enabled climatic syntheses in Europe and Africa (numerous papers), (3) to show how strong interaction with climate modellers enable to understand the effect of climatic forcings on past climate and to test the realism of climate models. Recently, he demonstrated that atmospheric CO2 may induce biases on our statistical approaches by using an inverse modelling approach (several papers including a PNAS paper in 2007). He studies also the effect of future climate changes on the Mediterranean forest and presently he works on the climate reconstruction and modelling in Europe, Africa and South America on the last 1000 years. He is author or co-author of more than 150 scientific papers in international journals. He obtained the silver medal of CNRS in 2005. He has (co-)supervised 16 PhD. students and is member of several national and international scientific committees.

References :

· Guiot, J., Beaulieu, J. L. de, Pons, A., and Reille, M., 1989. A 140,000-year climatic reconstruction from two European pollen records. Nature, 338, 309-313.

· Wu H., Guiot J., Brewer S., Guo Z. Peng C., 2007 Dominant Factors Controlling Glacial and Interglacial Variations in the Treeline Elevation in Tropical Africa. PNAS, 104 (23), 9720-9724. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0610109104.

· Nicault, A., Alleaume, S., Brewer, S., Carrer, M., Nola, P., Guttierez, E., Edouard, J.L., Urbinati, C., Guiot, J., 2008.

· Mediterranean drought fluctuation during the last 500 years based on tree-ring data. Climate Dynamics, 31 (2-3), 227-245, erratum p.2

· Jansen E. & Overpeck, J., 2007. Paleoclimate (chap 6). IPCC: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm

· Hillaire-Marcel, C. & De Vernal A., 2007. Developments in Marine Geology, Vol 1, C. Hillaire-Marcel & A. De Vernal (eds), Elsevier, Amsterdam, DOI 10.1016/S1572-5480(07)01018-4

· Nicault, A., Alleaume, S., Brewer, S., Carrer, M., Nola, P., Guttierez, E., Edouard, J.L., Urbinati, C., Guiot, J., 2008. Mediterranean drought fluctuation during the last 500 years based on tree-ring data. Climate Dynamics, 31 (2-3), 227-245, erratum p.247.

· Guiot, J., Hély-Alleaume, C., Wu, H.B., Gaucherel, C., 2008a. Interactions between vegetation and climate variability: what are the lessons of models and paleovegetation data, C. R. Geoscience, 340, 595-601. doi:10.1016/j.crte.2008.01.001

· Goosse H., P.Y. Barriat, W. Lefebvre, M.F. Loutre and V. Zunz, 2008. Introduction to climate dynamics and climate modeling - Online textbook available at http://www.climate.be/textbook

· Bradley, R.S., 1999. Paleoclimatology: Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary. International Geophysics Series, vol 68, Elsevier, San Diego.

CNRS-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France

University of Molise, Italy