WWRP Secretariat
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 [dot] int (edeconing[at]wmo[dot]int)
Nico Caltabiano
Scientific Officer
Nico is an oceanographer, with a master's degree in Ocean Remote Sensing at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and a PhD in Oceanography at the University of Southampton, UK.
Nico’s responsibilities for the WWRP include support for the new WWRP core projects Sub-seasonal to seasonal Applications for Agriculture and Environment (SAGE), Polar Coupled Analysis and prediction for Services (PCAPS) and Integrated Prediction of Precipitation and Hydrology for Early Actions (InPRHA). Also, Nico will be supporting the Tropical Cyclone-Probabilistic Forecast Products (TC-PFP) Project, the Data Assimilation and Observing Systems (DAOS) Working Group. He will work closely with the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) colleagues in many activities that are relevant to the WWRP groups.
Before joining the WWRP Secretariat, Nico was part of the WCRP Secretariat and also served as the Deputy Executive Director of the International CLIVAR Project Office, and more recently Project Manager of the Klimapolis Laboratory and EU AQ-WATCH project at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, in Hamburg, Germany.
Contact:
avazcaltabianowmo [dot] int (avazcaltabiano[at]wmo[dot]int)
Hellen Msemo
Scientific Officer
Hellen Msemo is a Scientific Officer in the World Weather Research Programme at WMO. She is from Tanzania. She worked with the Tanzania Meteorology Authority (TMA) and later the University of Leeds as a researcher.
Hellen is an interdisciplinary researcher with research experience in both physical and social sciences. Her research expertise covers weather and climate forecasting, impact-based severe weather warnings, and verification, public weather services, socioeconomic benefits of weather and climate information for climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water, health, energy, and disaster risk reduction (DRR), User Engagement, and Co-production.
As a researcher who has worked for a National Weather Service and the University of Leeds, she is familiar with operational activities and has experience in moving research to operations.
Hellen’s responsibilities for the WWRP include supporting the WWRP core projects: - URBAN Project, Early Warning for Southern Africa (EWSA), Nowcasting and Mesoscale Research, Aviation Research Development Project (AvRDP) and the activities of the WWRP Working Groups. Supporting the WMO's Early Warning for All initiative, she also liaises with WCRP and GAW on identifying relevant projects.
Contact:
hmsemowmo [dot] int (hmsemo[at]wmo[dot]int)
Isha Bhasin
Associate Scientific Officer
Isha Bhasin is an associate scientific officer for the World Weather Research Programme at WMO.
Isha’s responsibilities for the WWRP include managing the Country Profile Database (CPDB), updating the WWRP Community Platform and providing programmatic support to the WWRP Implementation Plan. Isha is also responsible for communications for WWRP.
Isha is also supporting the PEOPLE Project and the Working Group on Societal and Economic Research Applications (SERA).
Contact:
ibhasinwmo [dot] int (ibhasin[at]wmo[dot]int)
Liye Li
Junior Professional Officer
Liye LI is a Junior Professional Officer in the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) at WMO. She is a young researcher with interests in high-impact weather events, combining perspectives from both physical and social sciences.
Liye’s initial responsibility at WWRP will be supporting the organization of the High Impact Weather (HIWeather) Project Final Conference. Additionally, she will support the WWRP Integrated Prediction of Precipitation and Hydrology for Early Actions (InPRHA) project, the Working Group on Tropical Meteorology Research (TMR), and the Working Group on Nowcasting and Mesoscale Research (NMR).
Before joining the WWRP, Liye served in the International Coordination Office of HIWeather and CMA Earth System Modelling and Prediction Centre. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, focusing on the sub-hourly and hourly rainfall features of extreme Monsoon seasons, and a master’s degree in mesoscale meteorology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She also had the experience of operational weather services and disastrous weather analysis while working as a forecaster under CMA.
Contact
lliwmo [dot] int (lli[at]wmo[dot]int)
Jungjin Lee
Intern
Jungjin Lee is an Intern with the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) at WMO. She is studying Atmospheric Science at Yonsei University, Republic of Korea. Before joining WMO, Jungjin worked in the Air–Sea Modelling Lab at Yonsei University, where she compared changes in Southern Ocean transport under rising CO₂ levels across multiple global climate models. At WWRP, she is providing programmatic support and contributing to ongoing projects and activities.
Contact:
jleewmo [dot] int (jlee[at]wmo[dot]int)