The Scientific Committee

Prof. Detlef Stammer was elected as JSC Chair in 2019. He is Professor at the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability, University of Hamburg (Germany). His research interests include the role of the ocean in climate variability and sea level change.
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Dr. Helen Cleugh is an atmospheric scientist with almost 30 years’ experience combining research discovery, delivery, and leadership. She was appointed as a member of the WCRP Joint Scientific Committee (JSC) in 2015 and elected as JSC Vice-Chair in 2019. Her research expertise lies in quantifying the interactions between the land surface and the atmosphere, and their effects on weather, climate and hydrology; and water-use and carbon uptake. This research has provided data, information, and knowledge for decision and policy-makers in government; resource managers; urban planners; and the agriculture sector.

Sandrine Bony is a CNRS senior research scientist at Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD/IPSL) in Paris. Her research aims at understanding the role of clouds in climate and climate change using models and observations. She was a co-lead coordinator of the WCRP Grand Challenge of Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity and she is currently a co-chair of the GEWEX panel on Global Atmospheric System Studies (GASS).
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Dr. Tereza Cavazos is a Senior Scientist and Chair of the Graduate Program of Physical Oceanography at the Center of Scientific Research and Higher Education of Ensenada (CICESE), Baja California, Mexico. Tereza is the co-chair of the CLIVAR American Monsoon Panel and member of the scientific committees of the Inter American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) and CORDEX. She was the first woman president of the Mexican Geophysical Union (UGM, 2014-2015). Her research work has been focused on climate variability, climate change, El Niño/Southern Oscillation, the North American monsoon, tropical cyclones, extreme events, and climate modeling and downscaling.

Dr. Jens Christensen is Director of the Centre for Regional Change in the Earth System since 2009 and Scientific Head (Forskningsleder) at the Danish Climate Centre of the Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen. He is an expert in the use of climate models for predicting future climate, an expert on Arctic climate change, and the extremes of temperature and precipitation. Jens has contributed to the third, fourth and fifth IPCC Assessment Reports.

Chris Davis chairs the Science Steering Committee for the World Weather Research Programme. As a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado in the United States, Chris works on tropical cyclones and mesoscale weather hazards.

Dr. Leandro Baltasar Díaz has a PhD in Atmospheric Science and is currently an Assistant Researcher of Argentina National Scientific and Technological Research Council (CONICET) at Center for Atmosphere and Ocean Research (CIMA) in the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He is also an Assistant Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (DCAO) and an active member of Young Earth System Scientists (YESS) community. His research experience includes projects related to climate variability, climate multi-year prediction and detection and attribution of regional climate change, focusing on South America. He is also interested in trans-disciplinary work and co-production methodologies with local communities.
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Han Dolman is director of Royal NIOZ, the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research at Texel, Netherlands. He is also chair of the Steering committee of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and chairs the Climate Science Advisory Board of the European Space Agency (ESA). His background is in climate science, in particular the interaction of biogeochemical cycles and climate. He is particularly interested in the global carbon cycle and has worked on tropical rainforest in the Amazon and the permafrost tundra in the Far East of Siberia. He is part time professor at Department of Earth Sciences of the Free University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Kristie L. Ebi, Ph.D., MPH. Professor, Center for Health and the Global Environment, University of Washington. Conducts research and practice on the health risks of climate variability and change.
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Dr. Greg Flato is a Senior Scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma), Climate Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada. He has worked on the development of a series of global climate models used to simulate historical climate variations and project future climate change. He is an elected Vice Chair of the IPCC’s Working Group I and served as a drafting author and review editor in the IPCC 6 th Assessment Report.
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Prof. Pierre Friedlingstein was appointed as a member of the WCRP Joint Scientific Committee (JSC) in 2019. He is also a Co-chair of the Scientific Steering Group of the WCRP Grand Challenge on Carbon Feedbacks in the Climate System.
Pierre is a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit recipient, he holds a Chair in Mathematical Modelling of the Climate System at the University of Exeter. His research interests are in the field of global biogeochemical cycles and their interaction with the climate system. More specifically, he is interested in the role biogeochemical cycles in the climate system over time scales ranging from glacial-interglacial to future IPCC-like projections. For future climate projections, he identified a positive feedback between climate change and the carbon cycle and developed a mathematical framework for climate-carbon feedbacks analysis. He is also involved in the development and evaluation of land surface models (JULES) and their inclusion in Earth System Models.

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Bruce Hewitson is a Director of the Climate System Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town. His research interests and activities include regional climate change, climate modeling and downscaling, capacity development, regional climate information for decision makers, and climate services with an Africa perspective. He has been active in the development of the new WCRP Core Project Regional Information for Society which he currently co-chairs.

Dr. Jin Huang is the Chief of Earth System Science and Modeling (ESSM) Division in NOAA Climate Program Office (CPO) providing leadership, management and oversight for climate competitive research programs which are aimed at advancing understanding, modeling, prediction, and projection of climate and the Earth system. Jin is an atmospheric scientist with 30 years’ experience in climate research, research-to-operation transition, climate grants program management and leadership. Jin is an active member of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability (US CLIVAR) Program.

Prof. James (Jim) Hurrell joined Colorado State University faculty in September 2018 as the Scott Presidential Chair in Environmental Science and Engineering and a professor in the Department of Atmospheric. Professor Hurrell’s personal research has centered on empirical and modeling studies and diagnostic analyses to better understand climate, climate variability and climate change, with an emphasis on the mechanisms, predictability and impacts of leading patterns of climate variability. He is especially interested in naturally occurring variations in climate on decadal timescales, and the predictability of those variations.
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Prof. Maria Ivanova is Professor and Director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, Boston, United States. Her work focuses on the performance of international institutions, implementation of international environmental agreements, and sustainability. She has been studying the United Nations Environment Programme and her book, The Untold Story of the World's Leading Environmental Institution: UNEP at Fifty, was published by MIT Press in 2021. Her current work examines national performance on global environmental conventions, and she engages with countries in East Africa to inform policy.
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Dr. Vladimir Kattsov is Director, Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory (MGO) of the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring (Roshydromet), St.Petersburg (since 2007). Head of the Roshydromet Climate Centre (since 2012). Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Scientific field: Global and regional climate 3D modelling; high-latitude climate dynamics; adaptation to climate change. Publications: over 130. Lead Author of the 3rd, 4th, 5th and Review Editor of the 6th IPCC Assessment reports. Lead Author of the Arctic Council (ACIA-2005; SWIPA-2011, 2017) and Russian national (2008, 2014) climate assessment reports. Other experience Since 2020 – member, UN General Secretary’s High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Action. Since 2019 – member, Science Advisory Panel, World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Since 2016 – member, Adaptation Committee, UNFCCC. 2009-2018: member, Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme. 2006-2018: member, Scientific Advisory Committee, APCC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Climate Center).

Dr. Roxy Mathew Koll is a Climate Scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, leading research on climate change and its impact on the tropical regions, the monsoon, extreme weather events, and the marine ecosystem. He is the Chair of the Indian Ocean Region Panel, and a Lead Author of the IPCC Reports.
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Dr. Orli Lachmy is a lecturer for Earth Sciences at the Department of Natural Sciences in the Open University of Israel. She is interested in the general atmospheric circulation, and specifically the interactions between the mean meridional circulation, the atmospheric jet streams and midlatitude storm tracks. I study the variability of the jet stream and storm tracks and their response to climate change using idealized numerical models and data analysis of observations and climate model output.
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Dr. Jean-François Lamarque is a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where he is also the current Climate and Global Dynamics (CGD) Laboratory Director. His research focuses on the use of models to understand the long-term changes of short-lived climate forcers (i.e. ozone, aerosols and methane). He is the current CMIP Panel Chair
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More information to come soon.

Sonya Legg is a physical oceanographer and Associate Director of the Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System at Princeton University, through which she collaborate closely with the NOAA-GFDL. She is CLIVAR SSG co-chair. Her research interests focus on the physics and dynamics of the ocean circulation.

Amanda H. Lynch, Lindemann Distinguished Professor of Environment and Society, Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Brown University and Chair of the WMO Research Board.
Lynch's research focuses on the intersection between atmospheric science and environmental governance, with particular interests in the Arctic and in arid regions as places that express convergences of rapid change in natural and human systems.

More information to come soon

Jon Padgham joined START in 2008, and has been START’S Executive Director since 2020. At START, Jon has led or co-led several science capacity development projects in Africa and Asia that engaged early career researchers. His work helped strengthen analytical skills for applying climate model projections to adaptation decision making and helped advance understanding of climate change adaptation in drylands and of urban food systems. His experience in capacity development includes scientific writing, science communication across disciplines, persuasive communications of science to policy and other stakeholder communities, research and assessment methods, building links to global science assessments, and building mentorship bridges between junior and senior academics. Prior to joining START, Jon worked at the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development on climate change adaptation.  He holds a PhD in Soil Science from Cornell University in the US.

Prof. Thomas (Tom) Peter has been Full Professor for Atmospheric Chemistry at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zürich since January 1999. With his group, he performs fundamental research on chemical reactions and physical processes of aerosol particles including their interactions with the gas phase chemistry of the atmosphere.
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Jan Polcher is a Director of Research, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL). His research interests include understanding and modelling land-surface/atmosphere interactions, the influence of land-surface changes on the mean climate and its variability. In particular how climate change and human water usage affect the continental branch of the water cycle. He is currently co-chair of the WCRP GEWEX Scientific Steering Committee and the Grand Challenge on Water for the Foodbaskets of the World.

Regina Rodrigues is a Professor of Physical Oceanography and Climate at the Federal University of Santa Caterina, Brazil. She is the co-chair of the new WCRP Lighthouse Activity My Climate Risk and the CLIVAR Atlantic Region Panel. She is a member of the editorial board of Nature Communication Earth & Environment and the IPCC WGIII. Her research interests include understanding how tropical ocean basins interact and affect the extra-tropics leading to extreme events, using observations and modelling.
Link to linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/reginarodriguesrodrigues

Prof. Roberto Sanchez-Rodriguez is a professor at the Department of Urban and Environmental Studies at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico. His research focuses on climate change (vulnerability, risk, adaptation, water), disasters risk reduction, the interactions between urbanization and global change, sustainable development, free trade and the environment, and transboundary environmental problems. He is a vice-chair in IPCC Working Group II during the sixth assessment cycle (2016-2022).

Prof. Steven Sherwood is a Senior Scientist at Climate Change Research Centre and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, UNSW Sydney, Australia. His research interests: atmospheric moist processes and thermodynamics.

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Dr. Jianqi Sun is the director of Nansen-Zhu International Research Centre (NZC), Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP). Jianqi's research interests include the climate dynamics over mid-to-high latitudes, climate extremes, and climate prediction.
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Dr. Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla is the AIMS-Canada Research Chair in Climate Change Science at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences based in Kigali, Rwanda. His area of expertise is climate modeling, climate change and climate information services.

Dr. Sylla has participated to the IPCC Assessment Report 6 where he acted as a Lead Author for WG1 Chapter 12, a contributing author for WG1 Chapter 11 and WG1 Atlas, and a contributing author for the WG2 Chapter 9: Africa. Prior to this,

Dr. Sylla worked at WASCAL as a Director of Research and Senior Scientist in climate modeling and climate change, at Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles USA as a Lecturer and Research Scholar, and at the ICPT Trieste Italy as a postdoc.

Toste Tanhua is a chemical oceanographer working with marine biogeochemistry and ventilation of the ocean. He makes observations of transient tracers and conduct deliberate tracer release experiments to understand ventilation and mixing in the ocean. He also works on understanding the dynamics of ocean carbon, nutrients and oxygen in the context of water masses and the distribution of other chemicals. Toste Tanhua is also co-chairing the steering committee of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and coordinating the EU funded project EuroSea, that also deals with ocean observing and forecasting.

Susan Tegtmeier is a professor at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research interests include the impact of oceanic trace gases on the atmosphere, climate modelling and satellite-based observations of atmospheric composition. She is interim co-chair of the WCRP Earth System Modelling and Observations core project.

Prof. Martin Visbeck is head of research unit Physical Oceanography at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and professor at Kiel University, Germany. His research interests revolve around ocean’s role in the climate system, ocean circulation, upwelling systems, integrated global ocean observation, digital-twins of the ocean and the ocean dimension of sustainable development. He serves on a number of national and international advisory committees including member of the Governing Board of the International Science Council (ISC), Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), leadership council of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), Interim Decade Advisory Board for the UN Decade of Ocean Science Decade for Sustainable Development 2021-2030. Martin Visbeck is involved in strategic planning and decision-making processes about the ocean and sustainable development at a national, European and global level.

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Dr. Xuebin Zhang is Senior Research Scientist with Climate Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada. His main research interest is the understanding of how and why the climate, in particular its extreme weather and climate events, has changed over the past century and how it is likely to change in the future. He works closely with the users of climate information. He serves as a co-lead of the WCRP Grand Challenge on Weather and Climate Extremes, Editor-in-Chief for journal Weather and Climate Extremes. He was a coordinating lead author for the IPCC 6th Assessment WGI Report for the chapter assessing changes in extremes.