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NOAA GSL, Global Monitoring Lab (GML), Air Resources Lab (ARL), and Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) scientists surveyed possible new observation sites near Flagstaff, Arizona for fire weather research. Flagstaff was impacted by three wildfires in June of 2022 that caused the evacuation of hundreds of residents....

Meet our summer interns! Chuck Baker (University of Maryland) (Dave Turner, Jason English) My path to GSL has been shaped by extensive work in atmospheric research, particularly on the planetary boundary layer (PBL). At NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory (ARL), I developed strong skills in data analysis and model...

A record 62 tornado warnings were issued by the NOAA NWS forecast office in Norman, Oklahoma during the April 27-28 tornado outbreak. With current software, the forecaster draws a warning polygon that is stationary and constrained to its original area; it can only be reduced in size, not expanded. If...

GSL participated in the 2024 NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Forecast Experiment during May with several experimental models under the microscope. The primary goals of the NOAA HWT are to accelerate the transfer of promising new tools from research to operations, inspire new initiatives for operationally relevant research, and identify...

More than 500 female junior and senior high school students from across Wyoming state participated in the Women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) Conference (WiSTEM) on the University of Wyoming campus in Laramie on Tuesday, May 14. This was the 24th year of the WiSTEM conference, designed to...

NOAA has signed formal agreements to continue collaboration with two visual technology firms that are the leading providers of NOAA’s Science On a Sphere® spherical data visualization display systems and its flatscreen companion, SOS Explorer®. NOAA’s Science On a Sphere (SOS)® is a room-sized, global display system that projects...

GSL and UC-Berkeley scientists survey possible new observation sites in the Mosquito Fire burn scar. Blodgett Forest sits about 30 miles west of Lake Tahoe, and was the site of the 2022 Mosquito Fire, the largest California wildfire in 2022. GSL researchers visited the burn scar in April, 2024 to...

More than 50 million Americans suffer from seasonal allergies due to airborne pollen, according to the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. Pollen is an equal opportunity irritant, particularly during spring, summer and fall when wind-blown pollen from trees, grasses and weeds can be at their highest levels. Accurate...

Travis is a Computer Scientist at the Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) in Boulder, Colorado. In December 2023, Dr. Wilson led the successful development and transition of the Dynamic Ensemble-based Scenarios for Impact Decision Support Systems (IDSS) (DESI) 3.0 release to all NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) Forecast Offices. The DESI...

NOAA’s High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR), model developed at GSL, predicts way more than temperature, wind, and precipitation. GSL researchers are working on forecasts of hourly wildfire potential, skin temperature, storm runoff, windspeed at wind turbine heights, and dozens of other parameters. But the HRRR is also eclipse-ready. The HRRR...

GSL scientists from China organized a special Chinese Lunar New Years Eve celebration on February 9, 2024 for the Year of the Dragon. The Dragon symbolizes power, nobleness, honor, luck, and success in traditional Chinese culture. The Dragon is a supernatural being unparalleled in talent and excellence. Preparations for Lunar...

GSL will present new research at the 2024 European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria. Topics include research to predict smoke, dust, and other aerosols, and advances in scientific computing and atmospheric physics. Research and Development within the Scientific Computing Branch of NOAA’s Global Systems Laboratory – Isidora Jankov,...

As short-term weather forecasts are becoming more accurate, a paradigm shift has steadily occurred among weather forecasters. Meteorologists have gone from making a forecast, to helping people make use of the forecast—from determining what the weather is going to do to determining how the weather will impact people. The Impact-based...

Research may help with firefighting, evacuations Scientists have successfully applied a pair of advanced computer models to simulate last year’s wildfire that devastated the Hawaiian town of Lahaina. The development could lay the groundwork for more detailed predictions of wildfires that advance into towns and cities, eventually helping with firefighting...

Taylor Trogdon was recently named NOAA’s Team Member of the Month for December, 2023. Taylor serves as a research meteorologist at the NOAA Global Systems Laboratory in Boulder, CO. In late August and early September, the NOAA Global Systems Laboratory’s Taylor Trogdon was invited by the NOAA National Hurricane Center...

As the risk of impact from wildland fires increases across the United States, GSL’s Social and Behavioral Science Branch has performed research aiming to harness the power of social media to inform citizens during an active wildfire. One of our research social scientists examined how Twitter (now X) users engaged...

Dr. Ligia Bernardet, Chief of the Earth Prediction Advancement Division at NOAA Global Systems Laboratory (GSL), has been awarded the Silver Sherman Award for her outstanding leadership and support for community modeling at NOAA. The award was presented at the recent 104th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD,...

Recent wildfire disasters have devastated Hawaii, California, North Carolina, and parts of the western U.S., while major cities during the summer of 2023 saw dangerous air quality levels due to smoke from Canadian fires. Critical research is being funded by an additional $100 million over five years through the Bipartisan...

GSL has received three distinguished medals from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Since 1949, the Department has granted honor awards in the form of Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medals. The Gold and Silver Medals are the highest and second highest honor granted by the Secretary of Commerce for distinguished and...

GSL/CIRES scientist Kirana Bergstrom led a Jupyter Notebook tutorial on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for 8th grade students called” Artist vs The Machine: Can You Beat an AI at Pictionary?” She led three in person sessions, each an hour long, for a total of more than 100 students. Kirana is part...