An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Holly Titchner

Areas of expertise

  • Sea ice concentration observations.

  • Dataset development.

  • Climate monitoring.

  • Radiosonde temperature observations.

My Publications - Titchner, H

Current activities

Holly is currently working on sea ice observations for a new version of HadISST, the Met Office Hadley Centre sea ice and sea surface temperature dataset. HadISST contains monthly globally complete data, and is used for climate model based research as well as the monitoring of long term variations and trends.

Holly's work involves combining sea ice concentrations derived from passive  microwave satellite data with historical sources such as sea ice charts based on ship or aircraft observations. This requires detailed comparisons between the different types of data so that she can derive corrections to try and remove any artificial differences. Her aim is to make the record consistent through time so that it can be used for climate studies. She is also developing uncertainty estimates for the data.

Holly is always on the look out for extra sources of sea ice observations, particularly in the Antarctic prior to 1979, when the satellite record begins.

Career background

Holly has worked on observations in the Met Office Hadley Centre since 2004, after graduating with a BSc in Meteorology from the University of Reading. During her first four years she worked on radiosonde temperature records, investigating uncertainities in the global and regional trends in the upper atmosphere. Holly continues to update and maintain HadAT, the Met Office Hadley Centre radiosonde temperature dataset. Holly has worked on sea ice observations since 2007. Some of her previous work was published using the name Holly Coleman.