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

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 will be given by scientists who have collaborated with him, and also by those who have been trained and supervised by him.

We invite those who would like to share souvenirs (photos or short videos) about Jean-François, to contact us.

We invite all of you to book the 6 of February and join us (either in Toulouse or remotely) for this day in honour of Jean-François Geleyn.