John Mitchell is Director of Climate Science at the United Kingdom MetOffice and a visiting Professor at the University of Reading, United Kingdom. He received a PhD in Theoretical Physics from The Queen's University, Belfast, United Kingdom in 1973. He joined the Meteorological Office and, in 1978, took charge of the Climate Change group in what is now the MetOffice's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. His main specialty is the study of the climatic effects of increases in greenhouse gases and related pollutants.

He has been a lead author in three of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I Assessment Reports. He has shared the Norbert Gerbier-Mumm Award twice and ahd been awarded the Hans Oeschger medal of the European Geophysical Union. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Tim Palmer obtained his doctorate in general relativity theory in 1977 and has since worked at the Met Office, the University of Washington and, since 1986, at ECMWF. His research work spans a number of different areas in weather and climate on different timescales, with a focus on predictability. He has pioneered the use of ensemble forecast systems and the concept of seamless prediction of weather and climate. He is currently Head of the Probability Forecasting Division at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Reading, United Kingdom. This division is responsible for the development of ensemble prediction systems for the medium-range, monthly and seasonal timescales. Tim has coordinated two European Union projects on seasonal climate prediction, including the DEMETER project, which won the WMO Mumm-Gerbier Award in 2006. He has also won prizes from the Royal Society, the Royal Meteorological Society and the American Meterological Society. Tim was elected to the Royal Society in 2003 and has been offered a Royal Society Research Professorship. He was a lead author of the IPCC Third Assessment Report.

Mojib Latif is professor of climate physics at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Kiel, Germany. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed publications on climate variability and predictability. He has been awarded the Sverdrup Gold Medal by the American Meteorological Society for outstanding scientific accomplishments, and the Max Planck Award for Public Science for his ability to explain complicated research results in an understandable way.

Gerald Meehl is a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, USA. He has studied the interactions between El Niņo/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian monsoon and examined the possible effects of increasing carbon dioxide, sulphate aerosols and other natural and anthropogenic forcings on global climate.

Among his current committee appointments, he is Chair of the US National Research Council Climate Research Committee, co-Chair of the Community Climate System Model Climate Change Working Group, and co-Chair of the World Climate Research Programme Working Group on Coupled Models.

He is the author of more than 170 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. Gerald Meehl has contributed chapters to several textbooks, and, as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) science team, has contributed to the IPCC Assessment Reports since 1990.

Arun Kumar, Chief, Development Branch, Climate Prediction Center, NCEP, USA

Arun Kumar is currently the Chief, Development Branch, of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), USA. He joined NCEP in 1990 as part of the Coupled Model Project, responsible for the development of a dynamical prediction system for seasonal outlooks.

Arun Kumar received his PhD in 1990 from Florida State University. His research interests include improving seasonal climate predictions and understanding of seasonal climate variability; global influence of El Niņo-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) related sea- surface temperature anomalies; analysis of oceanic and atmospheric interannual variability in the atmospheric general circulation models; and analysis of climate trends. He has authored and co-authored more then 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals.