Pierre Friedlingstein

University of Exeter
Professor
Pierre Friedlingstein Image

Professor Pierre Friedlingstein holds a Chair in Mathematical Modelling of the Climate System at the University of Exeter. He has 20 years research experience in the field of global carbon cycle modeling, global biogeochemical cycles and global climate change and published over 80 articles including 19 in Nature, Science or PNAS. In particular he developed dynamic global vegetation models (DGVM) in order to investigate the role of terrestrial ecosystems in the global carbon cycle at multiple time scales. He was one of the first who used a terrestrial carbon cycle model to estimate the changes in land carbon content over glacial-interglacial cycles. He also showed that the current terrestrial carbon sink could not be explained solely by ecosystems response to atmospheric CO2. More recently he highlighted the important coupling between climate change and the carbon cycle, developing a mathematical framework for the analysis of the climate-carbon cycle. His C4MIP paper, published in Journal of Climate in 2006, is in the 10 most cited papers on either carbon cycle or climate since its publication (above 700 citations). He coordinates the coupled climate carbon cycle intercomparison project (C4MIP) which is sponsored by both IGBP and the WCRP. He is actively involved in climate assessment through his participation in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 1994. He is lead author for the Synthesis Report and for the Working Group 1 of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.