Claude Lorius, a leading glaciologist, who proved that humans were responsible for global warming, has died at the age of 91.
He led 22 expeditions to Greenland and Antarctica during his lifetime. Lorius discovered the proof of humankind’s role in the heating of the Earth’s surface during one trip to Antarctica in 1965, where an evening of whiskey with ice cubes led him to the discovery. He died on Tuesday morning in the French region of Burgundy.
His love of adventure set him on the path to identifying and predicting an impending catastrophe for the planet. In 1956, just out of university, he joined an expedition to Antarctica, where temperatures were as low as -40C (-40F). Despite this, Lorius and two other people lived there for two years, surviving with limited supplies and a faulty radio. He became increasingly fascinated with Antarctica’s mysteries through the more polar expeditions he led to the continent.
Discovery in 1965
In 1965, Claude Lorius had a revelation when he gathered ice samples and dropped them in whiskey. He spoke about this discovery half a century later. He said, “One evening, after deep drilling, in our caravan, we drank a glass of whiskey in which we had put ice cubes of old ice.
Seeing the bubbles of air sparkling in our glasses, I came to the idea that they were samples of the atmosphere trapped in the ice.” Realizing the scientific potential of analyzing trapped air, he decided to study ice cores, samples drilled out of the ice which act as frozen time capsules.
By drilling into the ice, Lorius drilled into the past, penetrating, in his words, the “ice of the first Ice Age”.
He published his research into air bubbles trapped in the ice in 1987. It showed that concentrations of the greenhouse gas had rocketed after the Industrial Revolution, causing temperatures to rise.
Lorius’s research brought him international renown and allowed scientists to look back over 160,000 years’ worth of glacial records. The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said that his research left “no room for doubt” that global warming was due to man-made pollution.
From then on, he became a campaigner, and in 1988, he was the inaugural expert of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He received the CNRS gold medal along with his colleague Jean Jouzel in 2002, and he was the first Frenchman to receive the prestigious Blue Planet Prize.
