World Meteorological Organization

James Ali Ijampy Adamu

James Ijampy Adamu is the Chief Agricultural Meteorologist of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency. He is the team Lead of the Seasonal Climate Prediction also the Focal Point for the WMO METAGRI project in Nigeria. He is engaged in the integration of Climate Services to agricultural activity, Climate change adaptation in Agriculture and the downscaling of Seasonal Climate Outlook to rural communities. In striving to improve relationships and connections between meteorologist, users and decision-makers, Mr. Adamu is also part of the Multi-disciplinary Working Group (MWG) in Nigeria, a core member of the Food Security Cluster of Nigeria and the West Africa Seasonal Climate Outlook PRESASS and PRESAGG. 

Mr. James Ali Ijampy ADAMU has trained over 75,000 rural farmers and agricultural extension agents in his career in Nigeria, mainly in areas of the application of weather and climate information in climate risk management in agriculture.

Elena Mateescu

Mrs. Elena Mateescu is currently the Director-General of the Romanian Meteorological Service, Permanent Representative of Romania with World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and adviser to the President of the Regional Association (RA) VI (Europe) within the Executive Council of WMO. With a Ph.D. title in Agronomic Sciences, she is also an associate professor at the University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Bucharest (USAMV) and a corresponding member of the Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences “Gheorghe Ionescu-Şişeşti”. Dr. Elena Mateescu has more than 30 years of experience in engaging the research in the agrometeorology field and assessment of the climate change impacts on socio-economic sectors such as: agriculture and food production, water management, biodiversity, and environment protection. Beside her longstanding important engagement in the WMO Technical Commissions, she is also the promoter of the initiative for the establishment of the Regional Agrometeorological Centre within WMO RA VI (Europe) in Romania. 

Yvette Everingham

Professor Yvette Everingham is a specialist in multi-model data fusion and is dedicated to helping agricultural industries implement profitable and eco-friendly ways to increase productivity in challenging climates. Currently, Yvette holds positions as Director of AgTAC (Agriculture, Technology and Adoption Centre) and Professor in Data Science at James Cook University.

Orivaldo Brunini

Dr. Brunini, Agronomy Engineer, has a Master Degree in Nuclear Energy in Agriculture and a Ph. D in Agrometeorology (from U. of Guelph-Canada) He is a Senior Scientific Researcher – in the field of Agrometeorology, He is actually President of the Foundation to Support Agriculture Research. He implemented a meteorological network of about 204 weather stations in the State of São Paulo. He has been engaged in research activities as: operational agrometeorology, micrometeorology, soil moisture estimation, crop water balance, crop zoning, and plant adaptation as a function of climate change scenarios. A former professor of Agrometeorology and Micrometeorology at the University of Sao Paulo(USP), teaching for graduate and undergraduate students. Member of the former CAgM commission as chair or co.-chair of the focus areas and former Vice President of CAgM. Former member of the scientific Council of CEPAGRI/UNICAMP, and the University Council of UNICAMP-He has supervised Doctor-Master and pos-Doctor students. He was Vice-President of the Global Federation of National Associations of Agrometeorology, from 2016 to 2018. He is representative of Brazil to the Agrometeorology Group of the Regional Association III, of the World Meteorological Organization. He is actually Vice President of the International Society of Agricultural Meteorology (INSAM), and a member of the SAFOAM.(South Asia Forum on Agriculture Meteorology) 

Flavio B Justino

Prof. Justino holds a Bachelor's degree in meteorology from the Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil (1996), masters in Oceanography (physical oceanography) from the University of São Paulo (2000), and PhD in meteorology by the Leibniz-Institute of Marine Research (2004) in Germany, and a pos-doctor fellow in atmospheric sciences at the University of Toronto, Canada. In 2015 -2016 joined the Byrd Polar Climate and Research Center at The Ohio State University in a sabbatical leave. He has experience in the field of Geosciences, emphasis in meteorology, working mainly on the following themes: Ocean-atmosphere interaction, climate changes (past, present and future), climate extremes and agricultural aspects and food security related to climate. In 2002, won the award for best work as junior scientist from Helmholtz's Foundation in Germany. He became Simon associate at the Center for Theoretical Physics of Trieste in Italy (ICTP/UNESCO).  

As professor at the University Federal of Viçosa (Brazil) , since 2006, Prof. Justino has supervised 21 Master Students and 22 PhD students. In collaboration with international colleagues has published 81 articles most of them in peer-reviewed journals. 

Roger Christopher Stone

Professor Roger Stone (PhD) is a professor in climate science and Director of the Centre for Applied Climate Sciences at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, specializing in climate-agricultural-water resource-climate-finance applications research. Professor Stone has 35 years of experience in meteorology and climate science, especially applied climate science, appropriate for agriculture, drought, and commercial needs (eg trading/insurance/value chain issues). Roger held the position of President of the Commission for Agricultural Meteorology within WMO and has more recently been elected as Vice President of the Commission for Weather, Climate, Water, and Related Environmental Services and Applications (SERCOM) and as Chair of the Standing Committee on Services for Agriculture, within SERCOM and the World Meteorological Organisation.

Kyu Rang KIM 

Dr. Kim is leading the Weather Impact Research team of the National Institute of Meteorological Services (NIMS) of the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). His research interest is in biometeorology including heat and cold stress assessment of human, pollen allergy forecast, impact-based forecast, and agro-meteorology. He is working on practical utilization of KMA’s operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) model outputs in agricultural field. He has developed a forecast system for leaf wetness and wind speed at farms based on operational NWP and machine learning models.

Andreja Susnik 

Andreja Sušnik is an agronomist by education and holds a PhD in Agronomy from the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana. She worked as an agrometeorologist at the Hydrometeorological Institute of Slovenia between 1992-2007.  From 2007 she is Head of Section for Meteorological Support to Agriculture in the frame of the Slovenian Environment Agency (ARSO).  The main focus of her work is the development of very diverse agrometeorological services, tools, and analysis for different stakeholders in agriculture, preparation of strategic documents related to vulnerability assessments and adaptation of agriculture to climate variability and climate change, last 15 years mainly focusing on the development of drought monitoring tools, methodologies and management measures on a national and international scale. In this context, she has been successfully coordinating several national and international projects and initiatives and is part of a number of international working groups on the topic, including with UNCCD and WMO.

Ward Nolan Smith 

Dr. Ward Smith is a Scientist at the Ottawa Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Ward has 25 years’ experience leading research on identifying sustainable and resilient farm management practices. He integrates new research into biophysical models and investigates the interactions between climate, soils and agricultural management on crop growth, hydrology, GHG emissions, and ammonia volatilization. Ward collaborates in several international studies focused on improving and inter-comparing agricultural models. 

Frederik Pischke

Frederik Pischke is a scientific advisor at the German Environment Agency focusing on international climate policy. With an academic background in Environmental Science, he has more than 17 years of experience in land and water resources management and the management of hydro-climatic extremes providing policy advice in high-level international sustainable development processes and multilateral and bilateral development cooperation. He has worked for intergovernmental and research institution in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe. 

Meriem Alaouri

Ms. Alaouri is an engineer meteorologist graduated from HASSANIA School of Public Works (EHTP) Casablanca, Morocco. She is currently the head of Agro-meteorology, Hydrometeorology and sectoral applications entity within the National Climate Centre of the National Meteorological Service of Morocco (DGM). Meriem ALAOURI was involved in several Multi-partner projects with national and international institutions (European Union and FAO) as expert on climatology and agro-meteorology, such us the implementation of Crop Growth Monitoring System in Morocco (CGMS-Morocco) currently used to monitor the crop growth status and to predict the crop yield, and MOdelling System for Agricultural Impacts of Climate Change (FAO-MOSAICC) designed to carry out inter-disciplinary climate change impact assessment on agriculture through simulations. She is also member of the ACCAGRIMAG (for “Adaptation au Changement Climatique de l’AGRiculture du MAGhreb”) project for the implementation of parametric agricultural insurance in Morocco for cereals. Meriem ALAOURI was a member of the Inter-program Expert Team on Climate Data Modernization Program of the Commission of Climatology (World Meteorological Organization) and in 2018, she has been selected as lead author for chapter 12 (Climate change information for regional impact and for risk assessment) of the IPCC Working Group I Sixth Assessment Report. In the same year, she was elected Co-Chair for Area 3, on agrometeorological risk management, of  the commission of agricultural meteorology during the intersessional period 2018-2022 (CAgM-17). 

Valentina Grigoryan  

Valentina Grigoryan is the Principal Advisor to Director of “Hydrometeorology and Monitoring Center” SNCO of the Republic of Armenia. She has worked in the National Hydrometeorological Service for more than 30 years, being in charge of the hydrometeorological, agrometeorological and climate service, international relations activities. She is a nominated expert in the WMO Commission for Weather, Climate, Water and Related Environmental Services and Applications, also Valentina Grigoryan is a core member of the Standing Committee on Services for Agriculture and lead of ET on Agromet Capacity Development and Communications. She also serves as the Focal Point of WMO-INTAD6, GCOS. She is an experienced expert on Agricultural Meteorology and Capacity building. She was an Academic Coordinator with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry. Currently, Valentina Grigoryan is involved in various projects collaborating with different international organizations.

Nabansu Chattopadhyay  

Dr. Nabansu Chattopadhyay worked as Head, Agricultural Meteorology Division, India Meteorological Department. Dr. Chattopadhyay has been working in Agrometeorology for more than 35 years, including working on various projects and consultancies with the World Band and WMO. He has published over 150 papers and received various awards and honours. At present Dr. Chattopadhyay has been working as President of the International Society for Agricultural Meteorology (INSAM). He will also chair the Expert Team on the Guide to Agricultural Meteorology Practices (ET-GAMP).

Daniel Alexandru  

Daniel Alexandru is Head of Agrometeorology department at the National Meteorological Administration, Romania. He is a specialist in estimating soil moisture, soil water deficit, calculating evapotranspiration, analysis of agro-meteorological phenomena impacting crops (frost, heat, deficits / surpluses of rainfall, etc.), organization databases agrometeorological and phenological production, development of case studies on the impact of agro-meteorological occurrence of risk factors on agricultural production. He was previously responsible for RA VI region of the WMO CAgM Expert Team on AgroClimatic Data and Sub-seasonal to Seasonal Forecasts for Agriculture as well as the President of the Romanian Society of Agro-Meteorology from 2017. He will chair the Expert Team on Agrometeorological data Issues (ET-ADI).

Catrina Johnson  

Catrina Johnson is an expert climatologist with over 25 years experience delivering consultancy projects to a wide variety of customer sectors both in the UK and globally. She is a fellow of Royal Meteorological Society. She has researched and developed agricultural pest and disease models, conducted both long and short range air dispersion studies and worked closely with Natural England to develop a wildfire severity model for the UK.

Aissatou Adamou Sitta  

Mrs Adamou Sitta is Head of the Chef Division Meteorological Applications at the Niger National Directorate of Meteorology. Her work includes research on operational seasonal climatic forecast methods and skills over the Sahelian Region of West Africa. She is a specialist in crop season monitoring, providing early warning information for food security, and the use of agrometeorological information to assist on-farm decision making.

Lorena Ferreira  

Dr Lorena Ferreira is Director of Sectorial Service Direction of the National Meteorological Service of Argentina. She has a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).

Hideki Kanamaru  

Hideki Kanamaru is Natural Resources Officer (Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction) at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), where he has worked for over 17 years. His roles at FAO have included positions at WMO HQ and in regional offices. His focus has been on enhancing the use of climate data and information to strengthen the evidence base, better inform adaptation policies and projects, and build resilience for farmers and other agriculture sector stakeholders to cope with climate-related disasters.

Feiyun Yang  

Yang Feiyun is a professor at the Training Center of the China Meteorological Administration. She has worked in the China Meteorological Administration for 29 years and services as a chief expert in the National expert group on meteorological services for agriculture. She had been a WMO expert on agrometeorology since 2014, including being a core member of the SC-AGR Expert Team on Agromet Capacity Development and Communication from 2021-2023.