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Pierre Morel, the first director of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and founding member of WCRP's Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) Core project, died on December 10, 2024.
Pierre began his research as a theoretical physicist. His doctoral thesis examined the existence and properties of a condensed superfluid state of liquid Helium 3 at very low temperature. He lectured on basic physics, geophysical fluid dynamics, and climate science. As his career progressed, he focused his research on studying the circulation of the atmosphere. He was devoted to the development of numerical modelling of atmospheric flow that laid the groundwork for the study of climatology.
Pierre's work played an integral role in the development of tools used to study the atmosphere, many of which are still active today. Examples include Project Éole - an experimental wind energy plant conceived in the 1980s and created in Quebec, Canada that closed down in 1993; the ARGOS satellite, a collaboration between the Centre National d'Études Spatiale (CNES) [French Space Agency], National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and NASA, to collect and relay meteorological and oceanographic data around the world that launched in 1978; the Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking (SARSAT) system, which was developed by the U.S. - specifically NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Coast Guard and Air Force - Canada, and France, with the first satellite launch in 1982; and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites' METEOSAT series of geostationary satellites, which launched in 1977 and remain active today. The launch of Meteosat-12 in 2022 was the first METEOSAT Third Generation (MTG) launch.
Early in his career, Pierre was the director of the French Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD) before he became the director of the Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES). In 1980 he became the first chairman of the WCRP, where he steered a broad interdisciplinary research program in global climate and Earth system science that involved the participation of atmospheric, oceanic, hydrological, and polar scientists worldwide. Pierre was later in charge of planetary programs at NASA and was involved in discussions about the future of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) in the mid-to-late 1990s. As an example, the Earth Observer article, "Minutes Of The Fourteenth Earth Science Enterprise/Earth Observing System (ESE/EOS) Investigators Working Group Meeting," includes a summary of a presentation Pierre gave that focused on flight mission planning for the EOS "second series," which was NASA's plan at the time although ultimately not pursued, with the "first series" (i.e., Terra, Aqua, Aura) enduring much longer than anticipated.
Pierre was the recipient of the 2008 Alfred Wegener Medal & Honorary Membership for his outstanding contributions to geophysical fluid dynamics, his leadership in the development of climate research, and the applications of space observation to meteorology and the Earth system science.
