Latest News

GSL hosted students from the Colorado School of Mines on 26 September 2023 for a tour of NOAA data centers in Boulder. The students are working on an eight-month Capstone project to design a Tier III multi-tenant data center that is 35,000 sqft. and supports 5 megawatts of load with...

Caption: Scientists from the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory and the NOAA Global Systems Laboratory tour the Chimney Hollow Reservoir site in Colorado. Dams deliver essential services that support multiple infrastructure sectors and industries in the United States. U.S. dams irrigate at least 10 percent of U.S. cropland, help protect more...

NOAA’s weather model predicts how the solar eclipse will influence weather NOAA GSL scientists have included effects of solar eclipses in NOAA’s High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) operational weather model, which provides critical weather forecasts for the energy and aviation industries. When the moon’s shadow sweeps across the U.S. West...

GSL proudly announces Dr. Curtis Alexander as GSL Deputy Director. Dr. Alexander received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from The Pennsylvania State University (1999) and the University of Oklahoma (2002, 2010), respectively. He joined GSL in 2009 as a University of Colorado Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences researcher,...

GSL hosted 14 interns this summer! Four graduate and seven undergraduate students were funded by a GSL and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) Professional Research Experience Program (PREP-GSL/CIRES). This is the second year of PREP-GC and the first year to host interns in person! Three undergraduate...

GSL is proud to announce Ligia Bernardet as our new Chief of the Earth Prediction Advancement Division! Ligia has been part of GSL for more than 20 years serving in various positions. She joined GSL (then the Forecast Systems Laboratory, FSL) as a postdoctoral scientist in the field of forecast...

On Friday, June 16th, GSL hosted a showing of the film This Is [Not] Who We Are in the NIST auditorium on the DOC Boulder Labs campus. The film was produced by the Boulder-based Landlocked Films and Blackat Video Productions, and winner of numerous awards, including People’s Choice Award at...

On May 4, 2022, a destructive long-track supercell thunderstorm was moving northeast near Lockett, Texas, while NOAA National Weather Service Meteorologist Vivek Mahale was on duty. The tornado then took a dramatic left turn into the town, and its motion changed to the north and then to the...

GSL/CIRES scientist Stan Benjamin received a LifeTime Excellence Award from the Energy Systems Integration Group at a ceremony in June. Benjamin was honored for “sustained contributions to atmospheric modeling and weather prediction for improved forecasting of renewable energy.” The Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG) is a nonprofit organization that marshals...

Zach Tolby, formerly a Senior Forecaster and Incident Meteorologist (IMET), at the Reno, Nevada Weather Forecast Office, was recently selected to be the first Manager and Lead Scientist of the Fire Weather Testbed, which is housed in the Global Systems Laboratory’s Boulder, Colorado offices. Tolby has over 12 years of...

Laboratory science reviews are conducted every five years to evaluate the quality, relevance, and performance of research conducted in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) laboratories. This review is for both internal OAR/NOAA use for planning, programming, and budgeting and external interests....

The NOAA National Weather Service and the greater meteorological community rely on high-quality observations to better understand the atmosphere, improve weather forecasts, and support warnings for hazardous weather events. GSL recently transferred the final versions of the flagship observation system, the Meteorological Assimilation and Data Ingest System (MADIS) to NOAA...

NOAA NWS forecasters are testing an experimental weather alert system called Threats In Motion (TIM). Threats in Motion lets forecasters create moving warning polygons for hazardous weather to alert the public in its path. The legacy warning system poses a challenge for forecasters when the hazardous weather appears to...

For the past 25 years, Science on a Sphere® (SOS) has been a valuable tool to visualize Earth system science for audiences of all ages and education. SOS was invented and built in 2005 and received a US patent. Since then, SOS has been installed in nearly 200 locations around...

NOAA GSL and CIRES research scientist Dr. Gerard Ketefian was recently awarded the Development Testbed Center’s Performance Recognition for Outstanding DTC achievements (PROUD) Award. The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) is a distributed facility where the Numerical Weather Prediction community can test and evaluate new models and techniques for use in...

A new study led by GSL and Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) scientists investigates the skill of various forecasting tools in predicting severe winter weather. Aviation managers are often faced with many forecasting options to help make decisions. In winter, these forecasts are used to decide which...

NOAA GSL and CIRES research scientist Dr. Man Zhang was recently awarded the Development Testbed Center’s Performance Recognition for Outstanding DTC achievements (PROUD) Award. The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) is a distributed facility where the Numerical Weather Prediction community can test and evaluate new models and techniques for use in...

In the summer of 2022, Alaska experienced a distinct shift in the spread of wildfires from the usual interior to the southeast region. More areas burned in southeast Alaska in the span of one summer than in the past 70 years combined. Amidst significant changes in fire weather behavior, accurate...

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting is GSL’s biggest meeting of the year to share our science. We have more than 60 presentations! Highlights are listed below. MONDAY, JANUARY 2023 8:45 – 9:00 CCC 302 Dynamic Ensemble-based Scenarios for Impact-based Decision Support (DESI) – Travis Wilson. DESI...

NOAA GSL, Chemical Sciences Laboratory (CSL), CIRES, and CIRA researchers, along with NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) Denver/Boulder forecasters, were awarded the CO-LABS 2022 Governor’s Award for High-Impact Research in a ceremony on Wednesday, December 14, 2022 at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. CO-LABS honored the team in...