During this year’s European Geosciences Union General Assembly, the 2019 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists was awarded to Earth scientist Marie Dumont for her outstanding contribution in the field of snow sciences.

The Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists recognises the scientific achievement, in any field of the geosciences, made by an early career scientist. It is granted to four exceptional early career scientists on the occasion of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly. This year, Marie Dumont, research scientist at the National Centre for Meteorological Research in France, was among the award’s recipients.  

Dumont’s research interests cover snow remote sensing, data assimilation, and snow optical properties. Upon conferring the award, the EGU noted that – among her many achievements – Dumont is making outstanding contributions to our understanding of the mass and energy budgets of the Earth’s snow, glaciers, and ice sheets. Dumont has extended her scientific interests towards snow surface energy budget, with applications for a variety of regions and domains (hydrology, climate, and natural hazards). Moreover, she is responsible for the sustained development of the Crocus snowpack model and for exploring the radiative effects of light-absorbing impurities on snowpack evolution. She is also deeply involved in the operational implementation of remote sensing techniques for numerical weather and avalanche hazard prediction, thereby transferring fundamental research knowledge for the benefit of society.

“Dumont is an autonomous, imaginative, and highly productive researcher.”

Dumont has published 39 articles to date, including seven as first author. The EGU also highlighted her aptitude in theoretical research (radiative transfer, snow modeling), her important collection of field observations (Alps, Himalaya, Antarctica), and her skills in data assimilation. “The spirit of an explorer obviously drives her, with the sustained motivation to develop the remote sensing and modelling tools necessary to provide physical process answers to the pressing questions of our changing cryosphere,” said the EGU. “One of her most important contributions has been the assimilation of remotely sensed albedo within a numerical snow model, a major step toward improved reconstruction of alpine glacier mass balance.”

Dumont also teaches voluntarily at the Université Grenoble-Alpes and the International Snow Science Winter School – sharing her knowledge with the next generation of scientists. In February 2018, she co-organised a snow science school in the French Alps. “To summarise, Marie Dumont is a brilliant early career European scientist, with a strong future and generous contributions to snow science – and a worthy recipient of the EGU Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists,” the EGU concluded. 

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 Find out more about the Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists on the EGU website. 

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