An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Dr Stuart Newman

Stuart is researching improvements to the way satellite observations from space are used in the Met Office's daily weather forecasts.

Areas of expertise

  • Fundamental radiative transfer and spectroscopy
  • Modelling thermal emission from Earth's surface
  • Maintaining and developing systems for use of satellite data in numerical weather prediction

Publications by Dr Stuart Newman

Current activities

Stuart is a Senior Scientist working on the assimilation of satellite observations into the Met Office's weather prediction model. In order to generate a forecast the model needs to be initialised with the best available information about the atmospheric state, and satellite data today make an important contribution to this.

The Met Office is currently upgrading its data assimilation systems, to be used on next generation supercomputers. Stuart is developing and testing this new capability for satellite sounding instruments.

Stuart is also a member of an international team which has developed a reference quality model for ocean emissivity and backscatter.

Career background

Stuart joined the Met Research Flight at Farnborough in 1999. Prior to his career at the Met Office, Stuart completed a PhD at the University of Bristol in the field of spectroscopy and atmospheric chemistry. After the Met Office relocated to Exeter in 2003, Stuart spent ten years working in Observations Based Research and was a lead scientist in several international aircraft field campaigns. Since joining the satellite radiance assimilation group, Stuart has worked on schemes for improving the assimilation of microwave satellite data into the Met Office's global weather model.

External recognition

  • Stuart and Fiona Smith shared the International TOVS Study Conference XVI prize for best poster in May 2008 for their work on identifying water vapour model biases from satellite observations.
  • In January 2009 Stuart received, jointly with Jonathan P. Taylor, the L. G. Groves Memorial Prize for Observations for their contributions to research from the JAIVEx campaign.
  • Stuart received a prize for best oral presentation at the 18th International TOVS Study Conference in March 2012 for remote sensing studies following the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption.