Executive Director,
International CLIVAR Monsoon Project Office (ICMPO),
Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM)
Rupa Kumar Kolli has recently taken up his responsibility to lead the ICMPO, after having served for 13 years at the WMO Secretariat, Geneva, Switzerland as the Chief of World Climate Applications and Services Division. His responsibilities at WMO included supporting the implementation of the World Climate Services Programme (WCSP), enhancing national capacities, coordinating regional and global networks of climate service providers, user liaison in climate-sensitive sectors, and research-operations linkages. He made significant contributions to the development of Regional Climate Centers (RCCs) and Regional and National Climate Outlook Forums (RCOFs/NCOFs).
Rupa Kumar has earlier worked at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, India, from 1982 to 2006, and was the Head of IITM’s Climatology and Hydrometeorology Division before joining WMO. Rupa Kumar co-authored a book on “Climates of South Asia” published by John Wiley in 1997, published a number of research papers on seasonal prediction and climate change for the Indian monsoon. He contributed as one of the Lead Authors on regional climate projections for the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in 2007. Rupa Kumar received his Ph.D. (1981) and M.Sc. (1976) degrees in Meteorology from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India.