A leading Chinese climate scientist has received a prestigious French medal for promoting research cooperation between China and France.

Qin Dahe, a Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) member and a leading figure on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has been awarded the Grenoble Medal by the government of Grenoble City, the CAS announced on its website.

Previous Grenoble Medal recipients include Nobel Prize winners Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and Paul Crutzen, glaciologist Claude Lorius and European Space Agency astronaut Jean-Jacques Favier.

Cooperating with the Laboratory of Glaciology and Geophysics of the Environment at Joseph Fourier University in France, Qin led research teams to discover new data on climate change in the South Pole and the Himalayas.

Qin, 61, was the first Chinese to cross the South Pole.

(Xinhua News Agency January 31, 2009)