| André J. Robert | |
| Birth Date: | 28 April 1929 |
| Birth Place: | New York, New York, United States |
| Death Place: | Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Fields: | Meteorology |
| Education: | B.Sc., Laval University, 1952M.Sc., University of Toronto, 1953Ph.D., McGill University, 1965 |
| Thesis Title: | An evaluation of the behaviour of planetary waves in an atmospheric model based on spherical harmonics |
| Thesis Url: | http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/-?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=118116&silo_library=GEN01 |
| Thesis Year: | 1965 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Byron Walter Boville |
Dr. André Robert (April 28, 1929 – November 18, 1993) was a Canadian meteorologist who pioneered the modelling the Earth's atmospheric circulation.[1]
Born in New York, NY in 1928, Robert moved to Grand-Mère, Quebec, in May 1937. He received his BSc from Laval University in 1952 and his MSc from the University of Toronto in 1953. He began employment with the Meteorological Service of Canada as a weather forecaster, then in 1959 shifted his interest to research in atmospheric models for short and medium-range numerical weather prediction.[1]
For his PhD (awarded in 1965), Robert worked at McGill University on the spectral model using spectral harmonics for the representation of atmospheric fields in global climate and numerical weather prediction models.[2]
Between 1963 and 1970, Robert developed the semi-implicit time integration algorithm for an efficient integration of the primitive equations for numerical weather prediction and climate models. Several weather centres in the world adopted this algorithm for their models (Canada in 1974, Australia in 1976, ECMWF in 1977, USA in 1980).
In 1980, Robert successfully combined his semi-implicit scheme with existing Lagrangian techniques which allows the use of much longer time steps and hence produces a very efficient integration of meteorological equations.
Robert retired from the Canadian Meteorological Centre in Montreal in 1987 and took a Faculty position at the Université du Québec à Montréal. There he worked with colleagues to develop a fully elastic atmospheric model that relaxed the hydrostatic approximation used by all large-scale climate and numerical weather prediction models, thus paving the way to a universal model formulation usable at all scales. The resulting model came to be known by the name of Mesoscale Compressible Community model (MC).
Robert's career was devoted to developing and implementing numerical techniques to solve the interacting time-dependent partial differential equations governing the chronological development of atmospheric behavior in an efficient manner, while still retaining accuracy; in contrast to many scientists who were concerned only with precision.
During his career, André Robert held several positions in national and international organizations:[3]
Dr. Robert received these Awards:[3]