During the last three decades, Mohammed Sadeck BOULAHYA has aquired outstanding experience in science & technology for development and capacity building to enable professionals in applying weather and climate to natural resource management and agriculture in Algeria, the whole of Africa and beyond. He holds a Research Certificate in Arid Land Agro-meteorology from CSIRO-Australia, State Engineer in Hydro-Meteorolog, WMO Class I Master of Sciences, Diploma in Advanced Applied Mathematics. With the support from UNDP-GEF and GCOS, Mohammed Sadeck contributed to the initiation, development and resource mobilisation of the ClimDevAfrica Programme with full ownership and leadership from the main Pan African Institutions, like AUC, ECA and AfDB. In parallel, he has contributed to the conception of an Early Warning and Advisory Climate Services System as a support to an Integrated Disaster & Climate Risk Management for Tunisia. Since January 2009, he has been a Senior Adviser to the ACMAD Management, with a mission to initiate an International Development & Advocacy Committee of Eminent Persons (IDACom-ACMAD) for resource mobilisation and strategic partnership. With more than 30 year experience, Mohammed has accumulated knowledge and capabilities to advise and contribute to the initiation, conception, implementation or evaluation of any socio-economic and natural resources management programme which is already or might be impacted by an ever changing climate.

Email: msboulahya@yahoo.fr

Graduated from University of East Anglia as an environmental scientist, then as a DFID officer, Torsten Mark gained a Forestry MSc from Oxford University. He pursued an international development career in Latin America and Asia as a tropical forester, watershed manager, agroforester and climate-adaptation specialist. Fluent in Spanish, his cross-cutting skills include effective training programmes; sustainable livelihoods; putting research into use; policy development; capacity-building; and all phases of project cycle management. He has designed and evaluated more than 15 international projects and in 2003 became a European Commission-registered expert in Rural Development/Food Security and in Environment. In 2006 he was exam-certified as a UK practitioner by the Association for Project Management. He led and won more than half a dozen large international tenders, and has actively participated in numerous international climate change conferences. Currently he is carrying out three climate-change vulnerability assessments to support adaptation planning by Oxfordshire local authorities.

Email: tmkowal@googlemail.com

Warwick has 20 years experience researching climate variability and using his weather and climate expertise in the decision making process. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and subsequently worked at the Universities of Oxford and Reading on several national and international research projects. Over the last 9 years he has been working in a commercial environment. First as the Director of Research for Weather Informatics Ltd where seasonal range forecasts and expert consultancy was provided to energy and financial companies. In the last 2 years he has been the Head of Meteorology and Climate Research for the Cumulus Funds at PCE Investors. This position involves providing weather and climate analysis for trading energy, agriculture and weather derivatives.

Email: w.a.norton@reading.ac.uk

Jim has over 30 years experience working with people and institutions in developing countries, seeking to improve decision-making through better use of environmental knowledge. With broad practical experience in development, Jim is equally at home on land - soil, agriculture, vegetation status, fire, erosion, land use change – water - rainfall, evaporation, runoff, groundwater - and air -weather and climate impacts, disaster early warning. He has worked for many clients in a variety of situations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America; run an applied research programme, and learnt French en route. His most recent work involves climate and development: evolving a programme developing an institution, and evaluating aspects of agriculture and climate variability in Africa.

Email: mountararat@btinternet.com

Alberto is a co-founder of Climate-Insight. Alberto has an extensive and solid experience in the production and evaluation of weather & climate information, their applications in a variety of sectors (e.g. hydrology and energy) as well as in project formulation, planning and management. Alberto holds a PhD in physical oceanography and climate from the University of Edinburgh (UK) and has worked for several years at ECMWF, a world-leading organisation for operational weather & climate predictions, and prior to that at NASA. He has been the Director of two very well received NATO events: an Advanced Study Institute on Seasonal Forecasting and an Advanced Research Workshop on Weather/Climate and Energy. He is the chief editor and an author of the book “Seasonal Climate: Forecasting and Managing Risk”.

Email: troccoli@climate-insight.com