An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Dr Lizzie Good

Lizzie works on observations over land with a particular interest in surface temperature from both satellites and ground-based instrumentation.

Areas of expertise

  • Remote sensing of land surface temperature (LST)

  • Ground-based observations of temperature

  • Satellite observations of urban heat islands and heat waves

  • Satellite observations of sunshine duration

  • Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) satellite instrument series

Publications by Dr Lizzie Good

Current activities

Lizzie's primary focus is on improving surface air temperature data sets, which are used for monitoring and Seasonal prediction verification. These data sets are currently derived from station observations. A key aspect of the work is incorporating remotely-sensed LST data into the data sets to improve spatial coverage and representation. This is particularly useful in regions that are poorly observed by the ground-based station network (e.g. Africa).

Owing to increasing user demand for daily maximum and minimum temperatures, current focus is on using LST data from geostationary sensors such as SEVIRI, which are able to observe the diurnal cycle. However, in the longer-term, polar-orbiting data sets will also be used to cross-calibrate data from the different geostationary satellites, and to improve coverage at high latitudes where geostationary data are unreliable/unavailable. As part of this work, Lizzie is CASE supervisor for the PhD project 'Observing the daily cycle of Land Surface Temperature using geostationary and polar orbiting satellite instruments', which is based at the University of Leicester.

Lizzie also has an interest in using satellite LST data to improve our understanding of urban heat islands and heat waves. Her other work also includes the design and implementation of a new and innovative method for monitoring sunshine duration using geostationary satellite data. Work is ongoing to incorporate this new data set into the Met Office monthly sunshine maps produced by the National Climate Information Centre (NCIC), which are currently based on ground-based observations.

Career background

Lizzie joined the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Monitoring and Attribution group in April 2008. Prior to this, she worked on remote sensing of LST and SST within the University of Leicester Earth Observation Group, where she completed a PhD in 2005 entitled 'An Investigation into the Accuracy of Surface Temperature Retrievals from the Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR)'. She also received her undergraduate degree in Geological Geophysics from the University of Leicester.

Lizzie's previous position was primarily concerned with the validation of operational LST and SST data from the ATSR instrument series. She also developed an infrared index for the detection of desert dust in ATSR SST observations, which is now being implemented with the ARC project.

Some of Lizzie's previous work was published under her maiden name 'Noyes'.