Philippe Ciais
Papers
2
Total Citations
72
H-Index
2
About
Philippe Ciais is a pioneering Earth system scientist whose research lies at the nexus of the global carbon cycle, climate change, and atmospheric chemistry. A senior scientist at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE), Ciais has fundamentally advanced our understanding of how terrestrial ecosystems and human activities interact to drive greenhouse gas fluxes. He is best known for leading the Global Carbon Project’s annual carbon budget updates, which synthesize emissions, sinks, and uncertainties—work that has accumulated over 100,000 citations and shaped international climate policy. His major contributions include quantifying the role of land-use change and wildfires in carbon emissions, as well as developing innovative methods to constrain black carbon (BC) emissions from boreal fires using satellite observations of absorption and extinction optical depths. This satellite-based approach, detailed in his 2018 study on Siberian fires, revealed that BC emissions from remote biomass burning are significantly underestimated in models, with implications for Arctic climate forcing. Ciais has also been instrumental in the RECCAP (Regional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes) initiative, and his work has been recognized with numerous honors, including the CNRS Silver Medal. His research continues to bridge satellite remote sensing, atmospheric inversion, and ecosystem modeling, making him a central figure in climate science.
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Top Papers
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