Dr. John W. Zillman is an Australian meteorologist, and former President of the World Meteorological Organization (1995-2003) and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE). Zillman also served on the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for 20 years. The IPCC itself originated from proposals at the Tenth Congress of the WMO in May 1987 in Geneva. Zillman notes of that meeting:
Several Directors of National Meteorological Services, especially from developing countries, called on WMO to establish a mechanism that would enable them to respond authoritatively to the increasingly frequent requirements to brief their Governments and national communities on the reality or otherwise of the threat of global warming as a result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. For the most part, Governments, at that stage, were reacting to sensationalised media coverage of predictions of future climate change promulgated by a number of individual scientists and climate modelling groups, as well as the then recently released report of the Brundtland Commission on “Our Common Future” (The World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) which had dramatically lifted the profile of enhanced greenhouse warming as a threat to the future of the planet.
Since its formation, Zillman has contributed to the work of the IPCC and provided critical analysis of the IPCC assessment reports.
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