Overall Project Team:
Benno Blumenthal, Data
Library Manager, IRI
Prithiviraj Fernando
– Associate Research Scientist, CERC & Wildlife Trust (Co-PI)
Fred Koontz – Deputy
Exec. Director for Conservation, Wildlife Trust & CERC
Marc Levy – Associate
Director for Science Applications, CIESIN
Herath Manthrithillake,
Dir. Environmental & Forestry Div., Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka
John Mickelson – GIS\Remote
Sensing Specialist, CIESIN (Co-PI)
Neil Ward – Head of Forecast
Development, IRI
Raman Sukumar – Assoc.
Prof. Indian Inst. Of Science, & Adj. Faculty CERC & Wildlife Trust
Lareef Zubair- Associate
Research Scientist, IRI (Co-PI)
Climate and Hydrology Project Team:
Benno Blumenthal received his Ph.D. degree in Physical Oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1987.
Blumenthal is the author and maintainer of the IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library, which makes climate data highly accessible over the World Wide Web.
Herath Manthrithillake formerly, Director of the Environment and Forestry Division of the Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka. He supervises the environmental
management of key parts of the elephant habitat within the Mahaweli basin in Sri Lanka and manages human-elephant conflict regularly. Since last year, he has been
serving as the Director of the Monitoring and Planning Unit of the Mahaweli Authority.
Neil Ward
is the Head of Forecast Development at the IRI. He has extensive experience
in operational forecast products and systems from his previous tenure with
centers in Europe. Ward focuses on the important link between forecast products
and user applications. In this role, he works in the field with collaborators
to better understand requirements, and also with the forecast research and
production team at the IRI, to ensure the feedback users provide becomes
incorporated, whenever possible, into improved forecast developments.
Lareef Zubair-
Associate Research Scientist in Climate Applications Research at the IRI.
He has carried out work in the fields of data analysis, environmental impact
assessment particularly of water resources projects and climatic and hydrological
analysis for Sri Lanka. At the IRI, he has initiated and managed a pilot
project on the use of seasonal climate prediction for water and environmental
resources management in the Mahaweli River Basin in Sri Lanka.
Staff in Sri Lanka
Heli Bulathsinhala, Research Assistant - Hydroclimatic Analysis,
is a graduate of Civil Engineering from the University of Peradeniya and has
evaluated climatic data quality in Sri Lanka.
Upamala Tennakone, GIS Operator, has over 12 years of experience
as a GIS operator with short training in England and extensive work with
ArcInfo and ArcView GIS systems. She is producing high-resolution climatologies
at present.
Chanaka Wickremasinghe, Data Entry and Management, He has completed
his (High) schooling and is pursuing a diploma course in desktop publishing.
He is compiling hydroclimatic data from a variety of published sources and
from various government departments.