Roger G. Barry was Director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado, Boulder from 1977 to 2008, and Professor of Geography from 1968 to 2010. He was appointed a University of Colorado Distinguished Professor in 2004. From 2012 to 2014 he was Director of the International CLIVAR Project Office, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK. He was a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and his awards included the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, the Nobel Peace Prize (as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change team), a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow, a Humboldt Prize Fellow, and a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Environmental Sciences (RAEN). Roger passed away peacefully in Boulder, Colorado in March, 2018. Thian Yew Gan is a professor at the University of Alberta, Canada, research ambassador of the German Academic Exchange Service, a fellow of American Society of Civil Engineers, a LEWI fellow of Hong Kong Baptist University, and a lead author for the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6-WGI) of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). Dr Gan is internationally renowned for his innovative contributions to hydroclimatology, cryospheric science, climate change, remote sensing, and water resources management. He has received twelve international fellowships, an award from the Association of Science and Engineering Technology Professionals of Alberta (ASET), and has been a visiting professor to Germany, France, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and United States of America.