Florence Rabier

Florence Rabier (born 1964) is a French meteorologist who is Director-General of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. She works on numerical weather prediction. She was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2014.

Early life and education
Rabier joined Météo-France as an undergraduate engineer in meteorology from the École nationale de la météorologie. After completing her undergraduate she joined the Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier University, where she earned a master's degree in meteorology. She moved to the University of Paris (Pierre and Marie Curie University) for her doctoral studies, where she researched variations in meteorological data in the presence of barlocline instabilities. She became a senior scientist in 1998.

Research and career
Rabier held various positions at Météo-France, where she worked on numerical weather prediction. In 1997, she developed data assimilation methods to optimise the use of satellite observations in weather forecasting. In particular, Rabier worked on four dimensional variation methods. She was appointed Head of the Observation Section of Météo-France in 2001.

In 2003, Rabier was made Chief Engineer of Bridges and Roads. and General Engineer in 2013. She worked on the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), an instrument for European meteorological satellites. The IASI is an interferometer that permits the measurement of atmospheric and humidity profiles. IASI has been operating since 2007 and considerably improved operational meteorology. During the International Polar Year (2007-2008) Rabier was part of a field campaign over Antarctica.

Rabier moved to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in 2013, where she served as Director of Forecasts. In 2016 Rabier was appointed Director-General of ECMWF. She uses supercomputers to better analyse and forecast the weather.

She was Chair of the European Space Agency Advisory Committee on Earth Observations from 2021 to 2023.

Awards and honours

 * 2014 Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur
 * 2014 Académie de l'air et de l'espace Grand Prix de l'Académie
 * 2024 Académie des Technologies