Prof. Jürg Luterbacher is the Director of Science and Innovation and Chief Scientist at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialised United Nation Agency. Previously, Prof. Luterbacher has been the Chair of Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change, for two years Director of the Department of Geography, and member of the Centre for international Development and Environmental Research at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany. He demonstrated leadership in a broad spectrum of climate science and contributed significantly to the holistic Climate-Earth System approach. He worked in paleoclimate science, modelling past and present climate across various time and space scales. He has contributed significantly to bridging the gap and understanding historical, current and future climate change, weather and climate extremes and impacts on ecosystems and societies. He was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report (AR5) chapter 5 “Information from Paleoclimate Archives”. Professor Luterbacher studied physical Geography, botany, chemistry and geology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He was awarded a PhD in Climate Science from by the Faculty of Science, University of Bern.