Research Director at CNRS, Robert Vautard is a meteorologist and climatologist. After his thesis at the Laboratory of Dynamic Meteorology (LMD-IPSL) on the phenomenon of atmospheric blocking, he progressed his work in several directions: atmospheric dynamics and its predictability, the modelling of atmospheric pollution, regional climate modelling and the study of extreme weather-climate events.
With his colleagues at IPSL, he also coordinated the development of the "CHIMERE" air quality simulation model which is now used in France and Europe for pollution forecasting.
For the past fifteen years, he has been particularly interested in the influence of climate change on regional meteorology and extreme events and in the detection and attribution techniques for these extreme events. By combining observations, climate simulations and statistical techniques, he has set up, with his colleagues, at the national and European level, demonstrators of "climate services", in particular for the energy sector.
In order to make climate change and its effects more understandable, these demonstrators have made it possible to produce solid and relevant information on adaptation to climate change for communication to the public.
He is the author or co-author of more than 200 international publications and has set up and managed several projects and programmes at the national and European level. In particular, he established the GIS “Climate-Environment-Society” programme, coordinated research activities in the LABEX L-IPSL, and, along with Hervé Le Treut and Philippe Bousquet, created the IPSL-Climate Graduate School within the University School of Research (EUR).
Between 2006 and 2011, Robert Vautard headed the Laboratory of the Sciences of the Climate and the Environment (LSCE-ISPL, CNRS / CEA / UVSQ), one of IPSL's nine laboratories. He is currently coordinator of one of the chapters of the 6th IPCC report on the hazards associated with regional climate change.
Succeeding Hervé Le Treut at the head of the Institute Pierre-Simon Laplace, Robert Vautard seeks to pursue and strengthen the vision and work of his predecessors through the new EUR IPSL-CGS programme.
His ambition for IPSL is for it to be recognised as a major international centre for research and training on climate and climate change, across the entire spectrum of its activities. These activities range from basic research on climate processes to the transfer of knowledge to society and businesses, through improved training, communication and mediation, and the development of climate services based on observations and models developed in IPSL laboratories.
