With the Académie des Sciences in 2015

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PERFORMING THE ROLE OF AN EXPERT AND ADVISOR
Experts Committees: to Reflect and Propose
Thanks to its members, top-level scientists representing all disciplines and fields of research, the Académie des Sciences may
look into any modern issue in which science plays a part. Standing or Ad-Hoc Thematic Committees, indeed, allow members of the
Académie to analyse and review the most recent data and formulate recommendations for action.
Standing Committees most notably constitute the cornerstone of the Académie’s advisory mission. Out of presentations and debates
prepared by members of the Académie, and to which external experts are invited when deemed useful, reports, advice notes or
recommendations are drafted, presented to decision makers and made available for consultation to all citizens browsing the website
of the Académie des Sciences.
The missions of the Committees of the Académie des Sciences have been detailed in One Year with the Académie des Sciences -201254.
Environmental Sciences
The Standing Committee for Environmental Sciences (Comité des Sciences de l’Environnement), which is behind many reports of the
Académie des Sciences since its creation in 1990, focused its activity on three topics:
•Atmospheric ozone: it was decided to conduct another short study on ozone, in
order to update the 1993 and 1998 reports (respectively Ozone troposphérique
[Tropospheric Ozone] and Ozone stratosphérique [Stratospheric Ozone]), whose
scientific contents remain solid but which should to be updated with the most
recent data. The work L’évolution de l’ozone atmosphérique - Le point en 2015
[The Evolution of Atmospheric Ozone – A 2015 Overview] was released on 16
October 2015 and was the subject of a press meeting 55;
•The MicroCarb satellite project: the Standing Committee for Environmental
Sciences joined up with the Standing Committee for Space Research (Comité
de la Recherche Spatiale) to produce a joint advice note on 1 December 2015
promoting the MicroCarb space mission project of CNES, the National Centre for
Space Studies (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales)56;
• Biodiversity: the Committee has undertaken important work on the adaptation mechanisms of biodiversity to climate change
and their limitations. Eventually, more than twenty explanatory sheets will be released by 2017.
Space Research
The Standing Committee for Space Research joined up
with the Standing Committee for Environmental Sciences to
produce a joint advice note promoting the MicroCarb space
mission project of the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales
(National Centre for Space Studies, CNES). This satellite is
designed to produce useful data to understand the carbon
cycle and how ecosystems behave in response the anthropic
perturbation of atmospheric CO2 levels. Such questions are
of high scientific and societal priority, for MicroCarb is a
preparation the future operational missions that will monitor
all carbon fluxes. This advice note was adopted by the
Académie des Sciences on 1 December 2015.
Having the ears of the public authorities, the Standing Committee for Space Research of the Académie des Sciences forcefully stands
as a focal point for reflection and proposals to reach the French and European policy arenas.
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