Jean-Pascal van Ypersele

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Jean-Pascal van Ypersele Biography

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele de Strihou (born 1957, in Brussels) is a Belgian academic climatologist. He is a professor of Environmental Sciences at the UCLouvain (Belgium). As a previous vice-chair of the IPCC, Van Yp (as he is called by his peers) is one of the forerunners of climate change mitigation through strong decrease of fossil fuel consumption.

Astronomy was his youth passion. Aged ten, he built his first telescopes with gutter scrap and lenses that he got from opticians in Brussels. Twelve years old, he was an assiduous reader of Sky & Telescope. In 1971 he became secretary of the amateur Cercle Astronomique de Bruxelles club, which put him into contact with professional astronomists. On 30 June 1973 he was part of an international team of astronomists that travelled to Kenya to observe the longest solar eclipse of the 20th century.

In 1979, ten years before the establishment of the IPCC, he took part, as a 22-year-old student, in the First World Climate Conference in Geneva, organized by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations.

van Ypersele received a PhD in physics from UCLouvain in 1986 (with highest honours), with his dissertation on his work done at the United States National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) on the effect of global warming on Antarctic sea ice. The choice for the National Center for Atmospheric Research was related to its large available technological means for atmospheric science research. At the NCAR he worked with climatologist Stephen Schneider. Promoters of his PhD were professors André Berger (UCLouvain) and Albert Semtner (National Center for Atmospheric Research and Naval Postgraduate School in the United States of America), one of the developers of the Modular Ocean Model.

Since 1993, he is a member of the Belgian Federal Council for Sustainable Development, and since 1998 he chairs its Working Group on Energy and Climate.

In November 1995, he participated in his first IPCC meeting (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that investigates climate change on Earth) in Madrid, as sole Belgian representative. He contributed to a short sentence that entered in the annals of the organisation: The balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate. This statement is crucial, as it mentions clearly for the first time that a worrying climate evolution is ongoing; it is demonstrated and no longer a theoretical projection of the future.

From July to December 2001, he was scientific advisor for climate affairs with the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele was one of the lead authors of the Third Assessment Report of the IPPC in 2001.

He was elected as a member of the IPCC Bureau in 2002.

In 2005, he was appointed as member of the “Energy 2030” commission (advising the Belgian government on energetic transition).

From 2008 to 2011, he was the chair of the scientific committee of the world’s largest exhibition (SOS-Planet) on climate change in the Liège-Guillemins railway station.

He was one of IPCC Vice-Chairs during the 5th cycle of evaluation, from September 2008 to October 2015.

In 2011, he co-organised the First Stephen Schneider Symposium (Boulder, Colorado, US). In 2013, he co-chaired the First interdisciplinary Symposium on Sustainable Development in Namur (Belgium), and co-chaired its second edition in 2015 in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). He personally briefed several heads of state, many ministers and CEOs about climate issues, and has been or is member of several international scientific advisory or editorial boards (EU FP7 Research Programme, Dutch Climate Research Programme, Météo-France, EU JPI-Climate TAB, Royal Meteorological Institute (Belgium), the leading journal Climatic Change , established by Stephen Schneider).

He participates in numerous events related to climate change – personally or virtually – thanks to his lectures and networks. All over the world. One day he is in Lima, Geneva or Marrakesh. The next day he may talk in Brussels for an auditorium filled with students or trade unionists. Two days later he addresses senior staff of a multinational bank, European bishops or a group of freemasons.

In 2014 van Ypersele was nominated by the Belgian government as candidate to take over IPCC-chair from Rajendra Pachauri in 2015. For 20 months, he travelled around the world to present an elaborate programme to decision makers, scientists, industrialists and journalists. His aim was to increase the influence of the IPCC.

He was member of the core writing team for the Synthesis Report of the 5th Assessment Report in 2014.

Van Ypersele’s work is sometimes challenged by “climate confusers”; there was a petition signed by eight Belgian academics and opinion makers opposing his candidacy as IPCC chair in 2015. Most known of these opponents is his colleague from UCLouvain, Professor István Markó [] who produced a large scientific output in the field of organic chemistry, but not climatology.

The elections of IPCC Bureau members (Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Working Group and TFI Co-Chairs and Vice-Chairs) were held during the 42nd IPCC Session from 5 to 8 October 2015, in Dubrovnik. Despite the assistance and official support of the Belgian government, his campaign pledge to maintain the scientific independence of the IPCC, and his stressing of the importance of inclusiveness and communication, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele was not elected. He lost in the final round against Hoesung Lee with 56 votes to 78.

He was nominated by the Belgian government as candidate to the IPCC Chair position in 2015, but not elected.

He remains an active member of IPCC and contributes strongly to the development and dissemination of its scientific message. He established the Walloon platform for the IPCC, with the assistance of the Walloon government in Belgium to facilitate contacts between the IPCC, the scientific world and politicians. He was appointed by UNESCO to be part of a group of experts tasked with drafting a Declaration on Ethical Principles in relation to Climate Change (approved by the UNESCO assembly in November 2017). The UN Secretary General appointed him in 2016 as a member of a 15-member group of scientists tasked with the preparation of the first quadrennial Global Sustainable Development Report. In 2017, he was appointed as a member of the high-level Advisory Group for the COP23 Presidency by the Fiji Prime Minister.

In a 2018 Associated Press interview, van Ypersele urged that “countries should do everything possible to work towards the report’s goal of reining in carbon emissions by 2030, at which point scientists say damage to the climate will be irreversible unless urgent action has been taken.” He added, “Nobody, even the so-called superpowers, can negotiate with the laws of physics.”

In 2019 he was appointed as an expert with the EU Horizon 2020 Mission Board for Adaptation to Climate Change, including Societal Transformation.

In 2019 he became member of a think tank of climate experts that was established in synergy with the climate strikes of the Belgian Youth For Climate, in which secondary school students left classes to demonstrate in favour of measures against climate change. Throughout 2019 he appeared as an assiduous supporter of the young activists.

On 2 April 2019 he announced that he would again apply for the IPCC presidency.

Van Ypersele carried out a PhD research in climatology. At the initiative of professor André Berger the Institut d’Astronomie et de Géophysique Georges Lemaître of the UCLouvain had started to study the impacts of changes in concentration of greenhouse gasses on the evolution of the Earth’s climate. In and outside Europe, research on the effects of human activities on the climate produced its first results.

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