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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...

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 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,...

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...

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...

As the risk of impact from wildland fires increases across the United States, GSL’s Decision Support Research and Evaluation (DSRE) 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)...

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...

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...

NOAA GSL has released an upgrade to a powerful decision support system to provide forecasters, decision-makers, and other stakeholders with ensemble-based weather forecast information and visualizations. The Dynamic Ensemble-based Scenarios for Impact-based Decision Support (DESI) version 3.0 is a web and cloud-based application that is used by the NOAA National...

GSL is pleased to announce that Steve Weygandt has been selected as the new Chief of the Assimilation, Verification, and Innovation Division (AVID). Steve brings a wealth of experience and vision to the new position. Steve received an M.S. degree from Penn State University in 1991, researching mesoscale modeling. He...

The Front Range windstorm of 30 December 2021 combined extreme surface winds (>45 m s−1) with fire ignition resulting in an extraordinary and quickly evolving, extremely destructive wildfire–urban interface fire event. This windstorm differed from typical downslope windstorms in several aspects. We describe the observations, model guidance, and decision-making...

GSL’s Mike Mascola has received the NOAA Employee of the Year for Customer Service! Mike serves as the Facility Assistant for the Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) and provides exemplary Audio/Visual (A/V) support for the entire David Skaggs Research Center (DSRC) in Boulder, Colorado. Mike is a resourceful and creative problem...

Are you going to the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting? Here is a list of GSL presentations and posters to consider! Dave Turner GSL “A containerized thermodynamic profile retrieval system for ground-based remote sensors” The choice of algorithm to derive thermodynamic profiles matters. The TROPoe algorithm can derive these profiles...

NOAA GSL Senior Scientist Dave Turner is an Agency Chapter Lead Author for the 5th National Climate Assessment Mitigation Chapter. The U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA) is mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The assessment is conducted about every four years and is an authoritative scientific analysis...