World Meteorological Organization

Ben Zaitchik

Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

Dr. Zaitchik is the chair of the Task Team and represents John Hopkins University and GEO Health. He holds a PhD in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. Ben is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins. He is an Earth scientist whose work includes study of fundamental atmospheric and hydrological processes as well as application of this knowledge to problems of water resources, agriculture, and human health. In this context, Dr. Zaitchik leads multiple projects that apply Earth Observation to study and predict infectious diseases, including work on malaria, cholera, enteric pathogens, and, most recently, COVID-19.

Judy Omumbo

The Science for Africa Foundation, Nairobi

Dr. Judith A. Omumbo, is the co-chair of the Task Team and holds a PhD in Epidemiology from Oxford University. Her research interests  involve building the capacity of the health sector in Africa to use climate information effectively for decision- making in the control of climate-sensitive diseases. She has contributed significantly to the development of the use of maps and Geographic Information Systems to undertake the spatial and temporal distribution of malaria in Kenya and the Greater Horn of Africa over the past 15 years of her career. She also serves as a technical advisor on malaria international program of the World Health Organization

David Farrell

Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology, Bridgetown, Barbados

Dr. Farrell is the Principal of the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), the technical Organ of the Caribbean Meteorological Organization. Over the last 13 years, he has been heavily involved in pre-and post-impact assessments following the passage of hydro-meteorological events through the Caribbean, in particular, the Eastern and Southern Caribbean. He has worked with the international community to design and implemented end-to-end early warning platforms in the Caribbean that integrate hazard, vulnerability, and socio-economic information.

Ken Takahashi Guevara

Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP), Lima, Peru

Dr. Ken Takahashi holds a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington, Seattle. As a post-doctoral researcher he focused on global climate change at Princeton University and the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. He is a former Executive President of the National Meteorological and Hydrological Service (SENAMHl, 2017-2021), and is currently a Principal Research Scientist and Director of Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences at IGP, as well as a member of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Joint Scientific Committee and an associate editor of Journal of Climate. 

Juli Trtanj

NOAA Climate Programme Office, Washington DC, USA

Juli is the One Health and Integrated Climate and Weather Extremes Research Lead for NOAA and is responsible for developing and implementing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Health Strategy. She is the co-chair of the WMO Service Commission Health Study Group, lead for Integrated Information Systems for the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), and is directly involved with the World Health Organization (WHO), and other partners in the development of the Integrated Information Systems for heat, cholera and other water-related illnesses. She has contributed to, reviewed, or edited sections of several IPCC and US National Climate Assessment reports and authored several book chapters and journal articles.

Rosa Barciela 

UK Met Office, Exeter, United Kingdom

Prof. Rosa Barciela is the UK Met Office’s Principal Consultant in Applied Science and Strategic Head of Health Science Integration at the UK Met Office. She is also the science lead of the bilateral Weather and Climate Science for Services Programme UK-South Africa, and a professor at the University of Exeter Medical School and the European Centre for Environment and Human Health. Her experience is the result of over 20 years working on the design, development, analysis, evaluation and delivery of projections and prediction systems from short-range to seasonal and climate timescales as well as applying those skills to provide end-user driven solutions.

Yun Gao

Chinese Academy of Meteorological Science, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, People's Republic of China

Dr. GAO Yun is Vice President of Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences (CAMS) is mainly engaged in scientific assessment and policy research on climate change. Since 2002, she has been involved in relevant affairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and international negotiations on climate change at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties, as core member of the negotiation team of the delegation of the Chinese Government.  She is in charge of the Chinese Government review on IPCC assessment reports during the whole IPCC AR5 cycle. She was the Lead author of China's National Assessment of Climate Change, and participated 17 times in the Plenary Sessions and Bureau Meetings of the IPCC as a member of the Chinese delegation or as a representative of the Chinese Government.

Emily YY Chan

The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, Hong Kong People's Republic of China

Prof. Emily Ying Yang Chan serves as Professor and Assistant Dean (Global Engagement) at Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). She is Director of the Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC), the Centre for Global Health (CGH), and the Centre of Excellence (ICoE-CCOUC) of Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR), and Deputy Director of the CUHK Jockey Club Multi-Cancer Prevention Programme. Her research interests include disaster and humanitarian medicine, climate change and health, global and planetary health, human health security, Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health-EDRM), implementation and translational science, remote rural health, ethnic minority health, injury and violence epidemiology, and primary care.

Sophie Gumy

Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

Dr Sophie Gumy is Technical Officer in the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health at the World Health Organization since 2009. She is leading WHO's work on evidence synthesis, capacity-building and monitoring of ambient air pollution exposure and related disease burden. Prior to joining the Air Quality and Health unit, she was working on the burden of disease from various environmental risk factors, including air pollution, water and sanitation and climate change. She is a scientist by training and holds a PhD in Biophysics and Molecular Biology and a MSc in Public Health.

Masahiro Hashizume

Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Prof. Hashizume is a professor of the School of International Health, the University of Tokyo. He is a physician and an environmental epidemiologist with particular interest in the health impacts of climate change and climate variability. He had his residency training in paediatrics in Tokyo, then received MSc in Environmental Health and Policy from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), and PhD from the Univ. of London (LSHTM). Prof. Hashizume is currently the Lead author of IPCC AR6 and member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Climate Change and Environment. 

Rachel Lowe

Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Spain

Dr. Rachel Lowe is an ICREA Research Professor and Global Health Resilience Team Leader in the BSC Earth Sciences Department. Rachel’s research involves modelling the impact of environmental change on infectious disease epidemics, to inform disease control and prevention strategies. She has published high impact research on modelling climate-sensitive disease risk, with a focus on integrating seasonal climate forecasts in dengue early warning systems in the Americas and Southeast Asia. She is the Executive Director of the Lancet Countdown in Europe, a transdisciplinary collaboration tracking progress on health and climate change.

Nick H. Ogden 

Public Health Agency of Canada, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Dr. Ogden is the Director of the Public Health Risk Sciences Division, for the Public Health Agency of Canada, he directs programs on model-based assessment of risk from infectious diseases, advanced epidemiological analysis, public health geomatics, molecular epidemiology and knowledge synthesis. Dr. Ogden’s research focuses on assessing risk by study of the ecology, epidemiology and genetic diversity of vectors and zoonotic and vector-borne micro-organisms, assessing the impacts of climate change on zoonoses and vector-borne diseases, and developing tools for public health adaptation.    

Vincent-Henri Peuch 

European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Services, Reading United Kingdom

Dr. Peuch is Head of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) and Deputy Director of the Copernicus Department at ECMWF. He oversees the management, technical and scientific activities that allow for the delivery of information products about atmospheric composition to the users.  He has been involved in the design and development of the European Copernicus programme (formerly known as GMES, Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) for over a decade.  Before joining ECMWF in 2011, he conducted research for 15 years on atmospheric composition modelling and data assimilation at Météo-France, pioneering in particular air quality forecasting in Europe.

Paulo Saldiva

University of Sao Paulo, Faculty of Medicine (FMUSP), Sao Paulo Brazil

Dr. Saldiva is the deputy director of the IEA-USP and a full professor at USP's Faculty of Medicine (FMUSP), having graduated in medicine and obtaining a PhD in pathology from the FMUSP. He has been a member of the Scientific Committee of Harvard University's School of Public Health and a member of the Air Quality Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO). He is currently a member of the Council of the City of São Paulo. His research focuses on pathology, pulmonary pathophysiology, respiratory diseases, and environmental health, and applied ecology.  

Xavier Rodo

ISGlobal, Barcelona, Spain

Dr. Xavier Rodó is an ICREA Research Professor and leads the CLIMA (Climate and Health) Program at the Barcelona Institute of Global Health (ISGlobal). His expertise is in numerical ecology, climate dynamics and the modeling of climate impacts. His research focuses on understanding how climate influences a wide range of diseases and ailments. He also works to better derive translational services for health stemming from climate information and accurate predictions. He recently created the AIRLAB, a new facility created to study the interactions between the chemical and the biological components of aerosols and their effects on human health, where they are testing now for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in aerosols.

Tong Zhu

College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, People's Republic of China

Tong Zhu is a Chenkong Chair Professor at the College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at Peking University. His research interests are in transport and chemical transformation of pollutants in the atmosphere, health effects of air pollutants, and urban air pollution control. His research has led to the finding that nitrate produced through the reaction of NO2 and mineral particles could greatly change the hygroscopic property of mineral particles, thereby affecting the health and climate effects of the particles. He initiated and organized an integrated observational study of the atmospheric environment in Beijing and North China (CAREBEIJING) with international cooperation to address regional air pollution and to identify the sources and mechanism of air pollution in Beijing and Northern China.

Joy Shumake-Guillemot

Scientific Officer, WHO-WMO Joint Office Climate and Health, Geneva, Switzerland

Rosa von Borries

Associate Programme Officer, Services and Science & Innoviation Department, WMO, Geneva, Switzerland

Lu Ren

Junior Professional Officer, Global Atmosphere Watch, WMO, Geneva, Switzerland

Jürg Luterbacher

Director, Science & Innovation, and WMO Chief Scientist, Geneva, Switzerland