A TRIBUTE TO JEAN-FRANÇOIS GELEYN

6 February 2020, Météo-France Conference Centre, Toulouse

On 6 February 2020, a tribute to the scientific career of Jean-François Geleyn, who sadly passed away on 8 January 2015, was paid at the Toulouse International Conference Centre of Météo-France.

Many colleagues joined this tribute either in the Conference Center or remotely : see for instance "ECMWF joins Jean-François Geleyn’s tribute"

Jean-François’s impact on the current generation of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) scientists is unparalleled, both scientifically and on a human level. His involvement and leadership in national and international scientific committees were unanimously appreciated, together with the quality of his human relationships.

After two years of research dedicated to physical aspects in NWP at Météo-France (Paris), Jean-François went to ECMWF (Bracknell and Reading) in 1976 where he developed the radiation code and was heavily involved in the general design of the first operational ECMWF model. Back to Météo-France, he became head of the NWP team who finished building the French operational models EMERAUDE and PERIDOT. He initiated the concept of variable resolution in ARPEGE and developed the cooperation with ECMWF around the ARPEGE/IFS software. He built a new NWP team in Toulouse from 1991 (the GMAP group) and ran it until 2003. During several years around 1990, he was very active in the WMO Working Group on Numerical Experimentation (WGNE). Jean-François created ALADIN in 1991. He acted as ALADIN Program Manager, the main executive officer of the ALADIN Consortium, years before this position was officially defined in the ALADIN Memorandum of Understanding. Until 2010, he led the life of the ALADIN consortium and started the merge between the ALADIN and the HIRLAM consortia and a productive scientific interaction within the SRNWP program with the other European consortia. For these outstanding contributions to the fostering of cooperation among scientists in European countries, he received the European Meteorological Society Silver Medal in 2011. As a token of recognition, in March 2011, Jean-François became visiting Professor at the department of Physics and Astronomy of Ghent university, Belgium, passing his long-standing expertise on NWP to students. At the same time, Jean-François started to dedicate his time more on the thermodynamic foundations of convection and turbulence and was the recognized driving force behind the COST(European COoperation in Science and Technology)-ES0905 action.

Presentations on various aspects of his successful research activities with a pioneering inspiration were given by scientists who have collaborated with him, and also by those who have been trained and supervised by him.

We thank all those who gave a presentation or who joined us on the 6 of February, either in Toulouse or remotely through the web-conférence.

François Bouyssel, Alain Joly, Pascal Marquet, Jean Pailleux, Patricia Pottier, Piet Termonia

 Videos of Jean-François Geleyn’s tribute day

• video of the morning (opening, the early days, global modelling)
• video of the afternoon (limited area modelling, prospects)

 Souvenirs and testimonies slide show

• the slide show

 Agenda with link to the pdf files of the presentations

• Opening
  • 09:22 Introduction et Bienvenue : Marc Pontaud, head of Research
  • Pourquoi faut-il honorer Jean-François Geleyn ? Olivier Moch
• Les débuts / The early days. chair : Jean Pailleux
  • Des débuts en France de la prévision numérique opérationnelle au projet AMETHYSTE, text, Daniel Rousseau
  • Les premiers modèles opérationnels au Centre Européen, Michel Jarraud
  • Les projets EMERAUDE et PERIDOT et l’évolution vers ARPEGE, Jean Coiffier
• Modélisation globale / Global Modelling. chair : Florence Rabier
  • Le projet ARPEGE/IFS, Philippe Courtier et Jean Pailleux
  • Les paramétrisations physiques, François Bouyssel
  • Simplified physics, Marta Janiskova
  • Nouveaux outils opérationnels, Emmanuel Legrand
• Modélisation aire limitée / Limited Area Modelling. chair : Maria Derkova
  • The influence of Aladin cooperation on European level: from Aladin to Copernicus, Andras Horanyi
  • Le consortium Aladin, Piet Termonia
  • Le noyau dynamique Non-Hydrostatique, Pierre Bénard
  • Physical parametrizations: ACRANEB2 radiation scheme, Jan Masek
  • Physical parametrizations: TOUCANS turbulence scheme, Ivan Bastak Duran
  • Les paramétrisations physiques : schéma de convection 3MT, Radmila Brozkova et Jan Masek
• Perspectives / Prospects. chair : Jean-François Mahfouf
  • COST-ES0905 European project, Dmitrii Mironov
  • Travaux avec Jean-François concernant la thermodynamique de l’atmosphère, Pascal Marquet
  • Profesor Geleyn : Weather and Climate Modelling at Gent University, Daan Degrauwe
  • Futurs du noyau dynamique, Mikhail Tolstykh
  • Prospectives en Prévision Numérique, Alain Joly