Dr Rupa Kumar Kolli has recently taken charge as the Executive Director of the International CLIVAR Monsoon Project Office (ICMPO), hosted by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, India.  Prior to this, he had served for 13 years (2006-2019) 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 had served earlier as a member and a co-chair of the CLIVAR Asian-Australian Monsoon Panel (AAMP, 2004-2006) and a member of CCl/CLIVAR/JCOMM Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI, 2005-06).

Rupa Kumar received his Ph.D. (1981) and M.Sc. (1976) degrees in Meteorology from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India.