Hervé Le Treut (born on 18 June 1956 in Toulon), is a French climatologist specialized in climate numerical simulation.

[1] He entered the École normale supérieure in 1976, and in 1978 began a doctoral thesis on cloud modelling in the climate system, which he will support in 1985.

In 2003, he argued that stabilizing the climate system changes would mean “we would need to cut by a factor two or three the global emissions of greenhouse gases”,[3] if not of carbon.

In this book, he predicts that due to CO2 emissions “well beyond the worst case scenario” considered by IPCC projections, a rise in temperatures between 4 and 6 degrees by the end of the century, depending on the selected model.

[6] The Copenhague conference failure on the same year made him say that “if we do nothing, the critical threshold of a temperature rise of 2°C will be overshoot by 2050.”[7] Alongside his research and management activities at the IPSL (Pierre Simon Laplace Institute), Hervé Le Treut is now Professor of Mechanics and Environment Physics at the École polytechnique and Pierre and Marie Curie University.