Lisa Goddard: Leading global efforts to advance near-term climate predictions
Decades of projects to help developing countries with agriculture, public health, energy, emergency planning
For more than 25 years, atmospheric and oceanographic scientist Lisa Goddard has been at the forefront of developing methods to predict regional climate trends from weeks to years. She works to understand the interplay of short-term natural variability and long-term climate change.Decades at Columbia University International Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), where she eventually directed, she worked with dozens of governments and nonprofits in developing countries to apply these increasingly complex forecasts to practical decision-making in agriculture, public health, emergency planning, and energy production. Her work extends to strengthening the climate expertise of scientists in many countries and their ability to advise government authorities.
Goddard died Jan. 13 in Mount Kisco, N.Y., from metastatic breast cancer, her family said. She is 55 years old.
“Her contributions to our understanding of climate are important, but her commitment to ensuring climate information is accessible and meaningful to policymakers around the world is a game-changer,” Alex Halliday, dean of the institute (Alex Halliday) said. Columbia Climate School, of which IRI is a part.
Lisa Goddard’s office at the International Institute for Climate and Society, 2013. (Francesco Fiondella/IRI)
Lisa Marie Goddard was born on September 23, 1966, in Sacramento, California, the eldest of two children. Her father, Glenn Goddard, was a manager with the California Department of Labor. Her mother, a former Mary Strickland, was an elementary school teacher.
The family moved several times in Northern California, and Goddard ended up attending high school in the small town of Davis. She loves cooking so much that she is considering going to culinary school. However, she was also an avid puzzle solver, and that interest prevailed. Her husband, David Cooperberg, said she decided to explore the mysteries of physics.
He was admitted to the University of California, Berkeley in 1984 and received his undergraduate degree in 1988. While thinking about her next steps, she decided to stop working on abstract theory. “At the time, in the late 1980s, the news about the ozone hole and global warming was just starting to come out,” she later said“I thought: This is an exciting way to apply my knowledge of physics. This is something I want to learn more about and maybe help people with.”
She went on to pursue her Ph.D. under the tutelage of a climate scientist at Princeton University George Ferland, who at the time led research aimed at studying weather patterns that were poorly understood at the time, known as El Niño. Philander found it to have an opposite state, which he called La Niña. This assemblage phenomenon is now known to be an irregular 2- to 7-year repeating oscillation that alternately heats and cools the surface of the tropical Pacific. This, in turn, has severely affected rainfall patterns in much of Asia and the Americas, as well as crop yields and the risk of floods, droughts and heat waves. Goddard became part of an effort to unravel its operations. She has written papers on the interdependent ocean and aerodynamics that drive the El Niño-La Niña cycle and continues to be a widely recognized expert on the subject.
When Goddard first started, women in the earth sciences were very rare. She is the only woman in her class at Princeton University.Later she said she accept the difference; Being a rarity gives an advantage because as long as she sticks to herself, professors and others tend to remember her better than her average male colleagues.
In 1995, after earning her Ph.D., she held a series of positions at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California as part of the newly created IRI. Originally a collaboration between NOAA and Columbia’s outpost at Scripps, it became the world’s first international agency to attempt to bridge the huge gap between daily weather forecasts and long-term climate change research. The aim is to create near- and medium-term climate forecasts that can be applied to social and economic issues.
At Scripps, Goddard and several others she worked with lived in a white cabin overlooking the Pacific Ocean. With a keen interest and love for the outdoors, she gets the side benefit of the occasional lunch break surfing there.
In 2000, Goddard moved to IRI headquarters on Columbia University’s suburban campus. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory In Palisades, NY, colleagues Stephen Zebiak and Mark Cane have come up with successful work pattern Used to predict the coming and going of El Niño and La Niña. Goddard works on improving the model and developing it to predict other regional weather trends, on a weekly, monthly or annual basis. Lamont-Doherty’s scientists themselves have primarily studied long-term climate change over centuries and millennia, and Goddard was able to work with them to incorporate the bigger picture into her work. In total, she has authored or co-authored approximately 100 published scientific papers.
Goddard talking to students at Columbia University in 2008. (Alan S. Olin)
The Institute focuses on providing information and training primarily to developing countries with limited meteorological and climate resources. Goddard traveled extensively in Africa, Asia and South America to conduct research and help establish programs to train and assist scientists. The forecasts are then applied to questions like what crops to plant next season; whether relief agencies should pre-position funds for potential floods, droughts or heatwaves; and the prospect that the proposed dam will receive enough water to provide hydroelectric power or irrigation.
In the early 2000s, Goddard helped design Columbia’s MSc in Climate and Society program. Now offered by the Columbia Climate Institute, the interdisciplinary degree is designed to produce graduates who can apply physical and social science training to real-world problems. For many years, she taught fundamental courses on climate variability and change dynamics. Many of the program’s hundreds of graduates have gone on to hold influential positions in journalism, government, nonprofit organizations and the private sector. In 2007, she founded Postdoc applying climate expertise (PACE) program, a national effort to connect early-career climate scientists with positions within decision-making bodies around the world. In recent years, she has continued to chair the program.
Goddard in 2012 Appointed as IRI DirectorShe faces a pressing crisis: The Institute’s sole financial backer, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has withdrawn funding to focus on other priorities. With the help of colleagues, Goddard quickly rallied staff, developed alternative plans, and rescued the institute by building a variety of backers including the World Bank, World Food Program, USAID, and governments. Various countries, from Uruguay to India.
Goddard’s May page in the 2014 Climate Models calendar. In the background is the dry Puclaro Reservoir in northern Chile. (Portrait: Charlie Naebeck. Background: Francesco Fiondella/IRI)
Under Goddard’s leadership, IRI continued to work with Many global and regional institutions, including the World Health Organization and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.Its scientists work on a variety of problems, including how coffee growers adapt to different climates; rise Malaria risk in Ethiopian highlands Due to long-term climbing temperatures; rainfall forecasts aimed at judging mudslide risk Guatemala volcano eruption; and an affordable way Insure smallholder crops Use climate data instead of traditional personal claims.
In 2017, Goddard and colleagues led the launch of A major effort by the newly formed Columbia World Project Enhance food security in six populous countries that are particularly vulnerable to natural climate variability and long-term climate change: Ethiopia, Senegal, Colombia, Guatemala, Bangladesh and Vietnam. Together, these countries are home to nearly 500 million people who face recurring climate-related threats to their food production and economies. the program, ADAPT TO AGRICULTURE TODAY FOR TOMORROW, still in progress.
Goddard has served in many influential national and international advisory bodies. From 2009 to 2017, she was a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Atmospheric Science and Climate. From 2013 to 2015, co-chaired the International Science Steering Group Climate and ocean variability, predictability and change organization.
Given the technical nature of her climate modeling work, Goddard looked for ways to communicate with the wider public.One year, some of her staff came up with the idea for a pictorial “Climate Model” Calendar, instead of featuring scientific charts or maps, depicts individual climate scientists modeling haute couture and striking bold poses. Goddard readily agreed to become “Dr.” May 2014,” in an elegant floor-length robe, standing in front of a photo of a Chilean reservoir ravaged by drought.
As the effects of human-influenced climate change have become more pronounced in recent years, Goddard has often spoken of the need to help affected communities adapt to increasingly extreme weather. “We naturally have variability in the climate system. We’ve had it since the climate system existed, and it’s going to continue,” she said in Video from 2018. “But now we have human-caused climate change, so that’s changing some thresholds.”
Goddard stepped down as IRI director at the end of 2020 and returned to his role as senior research scientist. She will retire in September 2021.
Her mother survives; her sister Christina Zimmerman; her husband; and her sons Samuel and Matthew Cooperberg.
Read Lisa Goddard’s family obituary and comments from friends
