Valerie Masson-Delmotte
French engineer and climatologist
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Through Climate change
Early life and education
Masson-Delmotte was born 29 October 1971 to two English teachers, and she grew up in Nancy, in the northeast of France. She completed a Diploma of Advanced studies in Engineering with honours at the Ecole Centrale Paris in 1993. She also received her PhD in from the same institution in 1996, in fluid physics and transfers. Her doctoral thesis was "Climate simulation of the Holocene means using general circulation models of the atmosphere; Impacts of parameterization".
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Career and impact
After her PhD, Masson-Delmotte began working as a researcher at the Commissariat for Atomic Energy (CEA), specifically the Laboratory of Climate and the Environmental Sciences. She became head of a paleoclimate group in 2010, head of a research group in 1998, and completed her habilitation in 2004. Since 2008, she has been the Research Director/Senior Scientist at CEA. Her research includes water vapour monitoring and combines past climate variability (ice cores, tree rings) with simulations, to address current climate models.
Masson-Delmotte served on numerous national and international projects including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Since 2014, she has been a member of the French Research Strategic Council.
In 2026, Masson-Delmotte represented the CEA as a member of the commission to develop a list of 72 women in STEM proposed to be added to the 72 men named on the Eiffel Tower.
She has published extensively, including several books for the general public, as well as children's books.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
In October 2015, she was elected co-chair of Working Group 1 (WGI) of the IPCC, which is the group that "examines the physical science basis". She was the co-ordinating lead author of the paleoclimate chapter in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) cycle. Masson-Delmotte led IPCC's Working Group One's (WGI) activities for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) cycle, a position she held until the election of a new IPCC bureau for the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) cycle.