Dr Yap Kok-Seng was appointed the Director-General of the Malaysian Meteorological Department (MMD) in December 2005. He is also the Permanent Representative of Malaysia with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and an Executive Council Member of WMO. Dr. Yap holds a Masters and PhD degree in Meteorology from the Florida State University. His interest and areas of specialization includes meteorological service planning and development, science of climate change and climate change negotiations. From 2004-2005, at the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties and its subsidiary Bodies meetings, Dr. Yap was one of the lead negotiators for G77 and China on the issue of development and transfer of technologies and co-chair for the negotiations on scientific, technical and socio-economic aspects of mitigation.

Kiyoharu Takano is the Director of the Climate Prediction Division, Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). He received D.Sc in Dynamic Meteorology from Kyushu University, Japan. He was involved in the development and research of dynamical long-range forecast at JMA to introduce dynamical method into JMA's operational long-range forecast. He also has the experience of having dialogues with climate information users and media as an operational long-range forecaster. He serves as the coordinator of "Sub-group on Climate Applications and Services (WGCAA-CAS)" of WMO Regional Association II (Asia).

Dr. Edvin Aldrian was appointed the Director of Center for Climate Change and Air Quality - Agency for Meteorology Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) Indonesia in May 2009. He attended the WMO Executive Council meeting LX and LXI as advisor and alternate to the PR and EC member from Indonesia and actively involved in preparing the WCC3. Dr. Aldrian holds a Masters degree in Earth Science Nagoya University Japan and PhD degree in Climate Modeling from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Germany. His interest and areas of specialization includes water and carbon cycle, climate modeling and sea air interaction and has published several scientific refereed publications. Dr. Aldrian was actively involve in many international climate change agenda from the contributing papers for IPCC AR4, negotiator in COP13, negotiator in World Ocean Conference, IPCC scoping meeting AR5, IPCC contributing and detection and preparing the IPCC 31st session Bali October 2009.

Rodney has been Scientific Coordinator of the International Centre on Research “El Niño” (CIIFEN) since 2004. He has an MSc in Oceanography and a postgraduate diploma in Development Project Management. Previously, he was Head of Marine Sciences, Department of the National Oceanographic Institute of Ecuador (1997-2004) and Executive Secretary of the Ecuadorian Antarctic Programme (1998-2002). He is Regional Coordinator of the Ocean Data and Information Network in the Caribbean and South America (IOC-UNESCO) and has been a member of the WCRP-CLIVAR Pacific Panel since 2005.

He has been a member of a WMO CLIPS project expert team since 2007. Rodney is Coordinator of the CIIFEN/Inter-American Development Bank project Climate Information Applied to Agriculture Risk management in the Andean Countries. He is a member of the Scientific Committee for the Assessment on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity in the Andes (Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research). He is a member of the American Meteorological Society Committee on Meteorology and Oceanography of the Southern Hemisphere and a member of the Scientific Team on Climate Change Impacts assessment over the Galapagos Islands (Conservation International -World Wildlife Fund). He has given more than 56 conference presentations in international forums on El Niño-Southern Oscillation impacts, climate change, applications, risk management and oceanography.

Joanna Wibig is an associate professor of meteorology and climatology at the University of Lodz, Poland. Her main areas of scientific inquiry are the following: atmospherical circulation, its variability and trends and influence on other meteorological elements in Europe; contemporary climate changes; and extreme meteorological events. She is currently coordinating national projects dealing with variability and trends of cloudiness, extreme events in Poland, impact of the atmospheric circulation on climate events in Europe and scenarios of climate change in Poland. She is also coordinating a project for the European Union on the stability of the atmosphere over Europe. In addition, Joanna took part in the international project, Baltex Assessment of Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Basin.

He was formerly the team leader of the Operational Implementation Group, a group dedicated to implement on the supercomputing framework the new developments on modeling, suggested by the scientific body. He graduated in the São Paulo University (USP), in 1997, as a Bachelor in Meteorology. In 2002 he received his MSc degree in Meteorology through the INPE. The dissertation was focused on the study of atmospheric Rossby Waves in the intraseasonal scale and relationships to tropical convection in South America. Currently he is accomplishing the PhD thesis research, which is mainly is concerned with the impact of a observed reduction or increasing of sea ice on the Southern Hemisphere circulation. Other research interests are climate variability on the intraseasonal scale, atmospheric dynamics, models assessment and atmospheric modeling. His expertise was developed as a result of more than a decade of services as a members of the CPTEC staff together with the post graduation achievements and includes, among others items, seasonal climate prediction, developing of climate user-oriented products, and model development and assessment.

Richard Graham is currently manager of the Climate Products Group in the Met Office Hadley Centre and is chairperson of the WMO expert team on Extended and Long-range Forecasting.
Richard obtained his PhD in Meteorology from Edinburgh University in 1991. He joined the Met Office in 1989, working first in studying the importance of different observing systems to the accuracy of numerical weather prediction forecasts. Dr. Graham later moved to long-range prediction, and is currently manager of the Climate Products Group in the Met Office Hadley Centre.
The remit of the Climate Products Group is ‘to develop and supply climate prediction products that distil complex information from a range of climate prediction models and other sources including expert assessment into agreed practical formats that can be readily used to inform planning and policy.’ The Group has responsibility for the global seasonal forecast products supplied as part of the Met Office’s commitment as a designated WMO Global Producing Centre (GPC) and produces specific seasonal forecasts for rainy seasons in Africa and other parts of the world. Dr. Graham also manages research and development in monthly-, seasonal- and decadal-range applications.