Episode 7: Aglaé Jézéquel

Deep Convection

Aglaé Jézéquel’s journey began surrounded by books, in a home where knowledge was cherished. Aglaé shared her parents’ passion from an early age on, but while her family was more into literature, she fell in love with science. Her academic path has led her to her current position as a scientist at the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where she does research spanning climate science and social science. She is not a climate scientist whose work extends into social science, or a social scientist who collaborates with climate scientist—no, she’s genuinely a physical climate scientist and a social scientist at the same time. Her PhD thesis had roughly equal components of both, and she writes legitimate research papers in both.

It’s not just methodological, though. When Aglaé talks, her scientific curiosity comes across as inextricable from her desire to do something about the climate problem, and as part of that, to understand both the earth system and the human, social processes involved. She has made multiple substantive contributions to the methodology, both its statistical aspects, and meteorological questions like how to characterize the atmospheric circulation of events in a way that makes attribution more effective.

Aglaé has worked a lot on extreme event attribution, that is, the science of relating individual extreme weather events to climate change. She has made multiple substantive contributions to the methodology, both its statistical aspects, and meteorological questions like how to characterize the atmospheric circulation of events in a way that makes attribution more effective.

But she has also studied how attribution science is used by those outside the scientific community, and in the space between the physical and social science dimensions, Aglaé has contributed in major ways to the discussion about the relationship between the two major types of attribution, “storyline” and “risk” approaches.

For many in the climate science field, there’s a palpable tension between pure scientific curiosity and the aspiration to effect real-world change. Thanks to her natural ability to integrate these two spheres, this tension seems to be much less present for Aglaé—and probably also for many young scientists of her and future generations.

“One thing I’ve realized is that you have two different motivations as a scientist […], one is curiosity and the other one is social usefulness, and they generally don’t really align. And you have to be okay with that. They can align to a point but they don’t entirely, and I think it’s important to be aware of that. And then […] I try to think not only as myself, but as what does a society wants from scientists and why are we paid by the state to do science. […] I [try to be] relevant as a scientist for society.”

The interview with Aglaé Jézéquel was recorded in August 2023.

• Aglaé’s website at ENS