Senior Lecturer, University of Buenos Aires
Anna Sörensson is currently working as a researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA). She holds a PhD from the same University, where she looked at the analysis of soil-atmosphere feedbacks in South America using regional climate models. From 2002-2004, she was a coordinator for foreign students at the University of Stockholm, Sweden. She also served as a scientific assistant at the Ministry of Environment, Buenos Aires. She has (co)supervised 3 PhD degrees and has authored over 50 publications that includes peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters and several reports. Currently she is one of the Coordinating Lead Authors of the IPCC for its Sixth Assessment Report, Group 1, Chapter 10 on Linking Global to Regional Change.
Argentina
Professor, Institute of Water and Flood Management, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
A.K.M. Saiful Islam is a Professor at the Institute of Water and Flood Management of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). He has received a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering (1989) from BUET, a Master of Science in Water Resources Engineering (1999) from BUET, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (2004) from Drexel University, USA. His research interests aim at climate change impact on hydrology, water resources management, urban and coastal flood management, remote sensing for disaster risks reduction. His research has adopted regional climate modelling, basin-scale hydrological modelling, river hydrodynamic modelling, urban flood modelling, coastal and storm surge modelling, weather forecast modelling, satellite remote sensing for environmental monitoring, hydro informatics for disaster risks reduction and climate change adaptation. He has published over 55 peer-reviewed journal articles, more than 100 conference papers, and contributed to 6 book chapters. Over the past decade, Islam has led several major international scientific climate change assessments and the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He contributed to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report and IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C as an Expert Reviewer. He is currently a Lead Author on the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. He teaches about 10 graduate courses and has organized many workshops locally and overseas. Additionally, he serves as the Coordinator of the Climate Change Study Cell at IWFM, BUET.
Bangladesh
Senior Lecturer, The Grantham Institute for Climate Change; Imperial College London.
Friederike (Fredi) is a Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, one of Imperial’s six hubs for research, innovation, and influence on global challenges. Fredi is a physicist with a doctorate in philosophy of science from the Free University Berlin. She joined the University of Oxford in the same year and was associate director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford before joining Imperial in October 2021. Her main research interests include extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves and storms, and understanding whether and to what extent these are made more likely or intense due to climate change — known by experts as ‘climate change attribution’. In 2018, Fredi became one of the international climate scientists writing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) The Scientific Basis, which was published in August 2021. She is also an author on the IPCC’s new Synthesis Report which will be published in September 2022. In 2020, Climate Change Attribution was named one of MIT Tech Review’s top ten breakthrough technologies. In 2021, Fredi was recognised for her co-founding of WWA on the TIME100 list as one of the world’s most influential individuals, according to the renowned TIME magazine and as one of the top 10 people who made a difference in science in 2021, by the journal Nature.
United Kingdom (UK)
Technical Advisor, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre; Climate Researcher, Department of Environmental & Geophysical Sciences, University of Cape Town
Izidine is a climatologist with a broad interest in regional climate responses to human activities in Africa. He focuses on climate modelling for short term weather forecasts, and climate projections. His current research involves the development of regional climate change projections through the framework of distillation, downscaling and understanding the driving dynamics. His key interests are within modelling of extreme weather events, contributing to more accurate future projections, and ultimately to improve decision making at a city level. Izidine is also the lead author of the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group 1. Originally from Mozambique, he moved to Cape Town in 2009, where he joined CSAG, initially for his MSc (2011), and then followed by a PhD (2015) which looked at improving the understanding of future changes in extreme weather events in Southern Africa. He enjoys photography and hiking, during non-extreme weather events.
South Africa
Acting Director, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM); Executive Director, Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR), IITM, Pune, India
Krishnan Raghavan specializes in climate modelling studies on scientific issues relating to “Climate Change, Asian Monsoon and Water Cycle”. Currently, he is the Acting Director, IITM and Executive Director, Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR) at IITM and is engaged in developing in-house capability in Earth System Modelling to address the science of climate change. Under his leadership the CCCR developed the IITM Earth System Model (ESM) – the first global climate model from India that contributed to the CMIP6 and IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. He was a coordinating lead author in the IPCC AR6 WG1 report (Chapter 8: Water Cycle Changes) and a drafting author in the Summary for Policymakers.
He is a Member of the Joint Scientific Committee (JSC), World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), WMO. He and his team from CCCR-IITM published the first National Climate Change Assessment Report of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt of India in 2020. After obtaining an MSc degree in Applied Mathematics from the Madras Institute of Technology, Chennai, he pursued Ph.D. research in Atmospheric Sciences at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. He was awarded a PhD degree from the University of Pune in 1994. He has published over 140 scientific articles/papers, supervised/co-supervised 12 PhD degrees (+ 11 ongoing) & 7 Master (MSc/MTech) dissertations. He has also offered training and lectures in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics & Atmospheric Sciences.
India
Professor, University of Chile; Director, Center of Excellence for Climate and Resilience Research, University of Chile
Laura Gallardo is a Professor at the Geophysics Department (DGF), University of Chile. She acted as the founding director for the Center of Excellence for Climate and Resilience Research. She obtained a PhD in Chemical Meteorology at Stockholm University (MISU) in 1996 for working on lightning emissions of oxidized nitrogen under the guidance of Prof. Henning Rodhe. Her research interests are broad and cover atmospheric modelling and data assimilation, tropospheric ozone, air quality in mega cities, and lately short-lived climate pollutants/forcers. She has been the leader for a scientific network and project studying South American Megacities (SAEMC, 2006-2012). She is the co-convener of the Pollution and its Impact on the South American Cryosphere (PISAC) initiative, and co-ordinator of the Prediction of Air Pollution in Latin America (PAPILA, 2018-2021), an international network funded by the European Union.
She has served as a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Global Atmospheric of Chemistry (IGAC) for the period 2003-2009, and as a member of the international Commission for Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution (iCACGP) since 2006. Additionally, she serves in the Scientific Steering Committee of the Surface Ocean Land Atmosphere Studies (SOLAS). Laura has guided multiple theses in engineering and atmospheric science in Chile and has (co) authored over 85 publications. Currently, she is a Lead Author for Chapter 6 on the IPCC Working Group I Sixth Assessment Report.
Senior Researcher, Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium
Rafiq Hamdi completed his civil engineering in meteorology in June 2000 from Météo France (Toulouse, France). He completed his Master’s Degree (DEA) from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) in June 2002, which was followed by a PhD in 2005 at the Institut d’Astronomie et de géophysique G. Lemaître in the field of urban meteorology. Since December 2005, Rafiq has been working at the research department of the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium. He is a member of the international consortium ACCORD that develops the atmospheric model ALARO and its land surface scheme called SURFEX, which is used both for numerical weather prediction and climate modeling.
He is a member of the international Association for Urban Climate (IAUC) and Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN). He is also a member of the expert team on surface processes within the Short-Range Numerical Weather Prediction Programme (SRNWP). Since October 2014, he has been a guest lecturer (10%) at Ghent university. His main interests include regional climate modelling, surface modelling, urban meteorology, the urban climate under global warming and interaction surface/atmosphere. He received funding for more than 10 projects from different sources (national, European, and China Academy of Science) and he has (co)-authored 58 peer reviewed publications and 12 book chapters. He has been a co-promotor of 3 PhDs and 9 master and bachelor students. He is one of the Lead Authors of the IPCC’s Working Group I Sixth Assessment Report. In August 2019 he was a Contributing Author for the latest IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land.
Belgium
Research Director, Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory of the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, France
Sophie Szopa is the Research Director of the Laboratory for Sciences of Climate and Environment (LSCE – CEA / CNRS / Université Versailles – Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines) at the Saclay campus near Paris. A chemist by training, her work looks at the study of tropospheric chemistry by numerical modelling. More specifically, she uses digital models to study how chemistry, climate and pollution interact in the atmosphere. In recent years, she has been focusing on the very distant past of the Earth’s atmosphere to trace its evolution.
Her research interests include environmental issues such as intercontinental transport of pollution, chemistry-climate interactions in the 21st century. She has (co) authored over 80 publications which include peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters and other opinion pieces. Currently, she is the Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 6, WG1 of the IPCC AR6 report. She is also a member of the scientific steering committee of the SPARC International Program.
France
Research Group Leader and Principal Research Scholar Pollution Management Research Group – Energy, Climate, and Environment Program, IIASA
Zbigniew Klimont has a degree in environmental engineering from the Technical University of Warsaw, Poland. He worked at the University of Warsaw (Department of Geography and Regional Studies) and then as a Research Fellow at the Polish Academy of Sciences (Department of Energy Problems). Zbigniew Klimont joined IIASA’s Transboundary Air Pollution Project in 1992. Currently, he is a research scholar with the Air Quality and Greenhouse Gases (AIR) Program (formerly Mitigation of Air pollution and Greenhouse gases program), where he works on the assessment of regional (Europe, Asia) and global emissions of various air pollutants.
He leads the development of models to estimate emissions and mitigation costs of ammonia, NMVOC, and particulate matter (including black carbon). These models are part of the integrated assessment framework GAINS recently supporting development of air pollution policy in Europe. For more than a decade he has been involved in European and Asian work on emission control strategies and has co-authored European, Asian, and global inventories and policy studies on air pollutants and their future evolution with a specific focus on black carbon and other aerosols. Currently, he is one of the lead authors for Chapter 6, WG1 of the IPCC’ Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). His research interests include assessment of regional (Europe, Asia) and global emissions of various air pollutants.
Austria
Director, Indian Institute for Human Settlements
Aromar Revi is the founding Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS). He is a global practice and thought leader, and educator with over 37 years of interdisciplinary experience in sustainable development, global environmental change, long-term futures, governance, public policy and finance, and urbanisation. Aromar is a global expert on Sustainable Development; Co-Chair of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). He is a member of the Advisory Board of UCLG, the global voice of local and regional governments from 0.24 million towns, cities and regions.
Aromar is a leading expert on global environmental change, especially climate change. He was a Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) of the 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. He is a CLA of the synthesis chapter on Climate Resilient Development Pathways of the IPCC AR 6 on Adaptation, and a member of the AR6 Synthesis Report Core Writing Team. He was also a CLA of the 2018 SR1.5 Summary for Urban Policymakers, and the 2021 Summary for Financial Decisionmakers. He was earlier a CLA of the IPCC Assessment Report 5 on Urban Areas, that established the role of cities and regions in addressing climate risks in 2014.
He is one of South Asia’s most experienced risk and disaster management professionals and has been a member of the Advisory Board of UNDRR’ Scientific & Technical Advisory Group (STAG) and its bi-annual Global Assessment of Risk (GAR), from 2008. He has led the design for UNDRR of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), a global partnership to promote the resilience of infrastructure systems to climate and disaster risks.
India
Senior Fellow, Chicago Council of Global Affairs
Ian Klaus is a senior fellow on global cities and foreign policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He also serves as director of research and policy for the Global Parliament of Mayors and as the series editor of the AR6 Summary for Urban Policymakers. Previously, he served as a diplomatic adviser to the Urban 20 and C40 City Climate Leadership Group.
He was senior adviser for global cities at the US Department of State. In that role, he led urban diplomacy for the United States, engaging dozens of foreign ministries and development agencies from Africa, South America, North America, Asia, and Europe on urbanization and foreign policy issues. He also internally managed the State Department’s efforts to develop urbanization-related policies. Klaus was deputy United States negotiator for the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development. From 2011 – 2016, he served as member of the policy planning staff in the office of the Secretary of State, advising the Secretary of State and Director of Policy Planning. He has been a member of the World Economic Forum’s advisory board on the future of urban development, the Creative Cities Working Group at Stanford University, a visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Ernest May Fellow for History and Security Studies at the Kennedy School of Government. He holds a Ph.D. in international history from Harvard University, and is the author of Forging Capitalism (Yale, 2014) and Elvis is Titanic (Knopf, 2007).
United States of America
Dean, School of Environment and Sustainability, Indian Institute for Human Settlements
As Dean, School of Environment and Sustainability (SES), Jagdish leads the build-out of the School, providing the strategic direction and operational guidance needed to expand its academic footprint, research activities and network, practice portfolio, and capacity building initiatives. Jagdish will also help develop the IIHS Kengeri campus and its environs as India’s first Urban Ecological Observatory and strengthen IIHS’s profile in Ecology and Conservation Science.
He is a field ecohydrologist and a landscape ecologist with research and teaching interests in applied statistics, environmental applications of remote sensing and GIS, ecosystem services, ecological restoration, river ecology and climate change. He loves the challenge of understanding complex changes in the environment over time and space. He was the Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land.
Jagdish was at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru where he was a faculty member for over 20 years. He has been a faculty member at the Wildlife Institute of India and has also been an affiliate teaching faculty at the National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR (NCBS-TIFR), Bengaluru where he has been involved with the Masters Programme in Wildlife Biology and Conservation since its inception.
India
