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:<\/p>\n
Several Directors\u00a0of National Meteorological Services, especially from developing countries, called on WMO to establish a\u00a0mechanism that would enable them to respond authoritatively to the increasingly frequent requirements to brief\u00a0their Governments and national communities on the reality or otherwise of the threat of global warming as a\u00a0result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. For the most part, Governments, at that\u00a0stage, were reacting to sensationalised media coverage of predictions of future climate change promulgated by a\u00a0number of individual scientists and climate modelling groups, as well as the then recently released report of the\u00a0Brundtland Commission on \u201cOur Common Future\u201d (The World Commission on Environment and Development,\u00a01987) which had dramatically lifted the profile of enhanced greenhouse warming as a threat to the future of the\u00a0planet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Since its formation, Zillman has contributed to the work of the IPCC and provided critical analysis of the IPCC assessment reports.<\/p>\n