Virtual Seminar/talk- Operational NWP systems at Météo-France: model development, recent progress, ongoing activities.

Bio- François currently leads the numerical weather prediction (NWP) research group at Météo-France in charge of maintaining and developing the global (Arpege) and regional (Arome) operational numerical weather forecasting systems of Météo-France and of conducting research which prepares future versions. This mission is carried out in an environment of strong international cooperation. These NWP systems are based on a computer code common to many services in Europe, such as ECMWF and ACCORD consortium. Previously, François was leading the team in charge of the representation of atmospheric and surface physical processes in operational NWP systems developed at Météo-France. The team has contributed to the development of a new prognostic moist physics common for NWP and Climate versions of the global model and of the prototype and the first operational versions of a kilometer-scale NWP regional model (Arome). At the beginning of his career, he performed research activities on the assimilation of surface parameters for continental surfaces in NWP systems, in the continuation of his PhD on developing a variational analysis of superficial soil moisture and temperature from screen level atmospheric parameters. He was also involved in the development of linearized physical parametrizations for the 4DVar analysis of the global NWP system and of an optimal interpolation analysis for surface and upper-air parameters for nowcasting at regional scales. His research activities are on modeling of atmospheric physical processes at different spatial and temporal scales in NWP systems.