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Lisa Marie Goddard (September 23, 1966 – January 13, 2022) was an American climate scientist who was director at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). She joined the institute in 1995^[1] and served as IRI's director from 2012 to 2020.^[2] Goddard was also an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University.^[3]

Her research focused on forecasting methodology, seasonal climate forecasting and verification, climate change projections and especially on the interpretation of climate models and available observations.^[4][5] She was involved in activities of the World Climate Research Programme and acted as co-chair in CLIVAR from 2013 to 2015.^[6]

Biography

Lisa Goddard graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in physics in 1988. She received a PhD in atmospheric and oceanic sciences at Princeton University in 1995 under George Philander.^[1][4] She joined IRI as a postdoctoral fellow immediately following her PhD, and spent her entire career there, eventually rising to the Director of the IRI, which position she held from 2012 to 2020.^[3][2]

She began her career at a time when the importance of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation to seasonal weather patterns was just beginning to be understood.^[4] The focus of her research would become weather forecasting on seasonal to decadal scales. She sought to provide people with near-term information about weather hazards such as droughts, heat-waves, floods.^[1] During the course of her career she collaborated with governments and non-profits in dozens of countries to provide useful short-term forecasts for agriculture, public health, emergency planning and energy production.^[4]

Goddard held a number of influential positions during her career. From 2009 to 2017, she was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Board of Atmospheric Science and Climate.^[4] She co-chaired World Climate Research Programme's CLIVAR project from 2013 to 2015.^[4]

She married David Cooperberg and had two sons.^[4] Goddard died from breast cancer in Mount Kisco, New York, on January 13, 2022, at the age of 55.^[1]

Selected publications

During her career, she contributed to more than 100 research articles.^[7] Many of her most prominent works were related to the use of weather models to forecast on seasonal to decadal scales, including:

• Gerald A Meehl; Lisa Goddard; James Murphy; Ronald J Stouffer; George Boer; et al. (October 2009). "Decadal prediction: Can it be skillful?". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 90 (10): 1467–1486. doi:10.1175/2009BAMS2778.1. hdl:11343/32785.
• Lisa Goddard; Simon J Mason; Stephen E Zebiak; Chester F Ropelewski; Reid Basher; Mark A Cane (August 2001). "Current approaches to seasonal to interannual climate predictions". International Journal of Climatology. 21 (9): 1111–1152. Bibcode:2001IJCli..21.1111G. doi:10.1002/joc.636. S2CID 129691453.
• Gerald A Meehl; Lisa Goddard; George Boer; Robert Burgman; Grant Branstator; et al. (February 2014). "Decadal climate prediction: an update from the trenches". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 95 (2): 243. Bibcode:2014BAMS...95..243M. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00241.1. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-000F-E747-9. S2CID 20657966.
• Lisa Goddard; A Kumar; A Solomon; D Smith; G Boer; et al. (August 2012). "A verification framework for interannual-to-decadal predictions experiments" (PDF). Climate Dynamics. 40 (1–2): 245–272. doi:10.1007/s00382-012-1481-2. S2CID 10125014.

References