Estelle de Coning

Chief of WWRP

Dr Estelle de Coning is the Chief of the World Weather Research Programme at WMO. She leads the current and new activities of the WWRP, linked to the WMO Strategic Plan and Long-Term Goal 3, which aims to advance targeted research on time scales of minutes to months. She is originally from South Africa, where she worked for the South African Weather Service until 2016, as Chief Scientist: Nowcasting and Very Short-Range Forecasting. This research group focused on lightning, radar and satellite applications for nowcasting purposes.

Her PhD focused on “Applications of meteorological satellite products for short-term forecasting of convection in southern Africa”. The EUMETSAT Nowcasting Satellite Application Facility’s software was installed at the South African Weather Service under her leadership and is operationally available for southern Africa via the South African Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre website. She is the author and co-author of several national and international peer-reviewed papers, chapters in books as well as WMO publications, such as WWRP's “Seamless Prediction of the Earth System: from Minutes to Months” (2015) and “Guidelines for Nowcasting Techniques” (2017) and “Guidelines for satellite-based nowcasting in Africa” (2023).

Contact:

edeconing@wmo.int