Latest News

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...

GSL collaborated with the NOAA National Hurricane Center (NHC) to develop the future of storm surge watches and warnings and used Hurricane Ian as a live test. Hurricane Ian was a destructive Category 4 hurricane that struck Florida in September 2022 and is the most deadly in Florida’s history since...

The Science On a Sphere (SOS) team recently released the live program, “The Pandemic & Air Quality,” after presenting at the SOS Users Collaborative Network Workshop in August. The program identified key relationships between the societal response to the pandemic and the air quality implications. SOS technology was a key...

The future of impact-based decision support for weather hazards is being developed by GSL and the NWS. Check out this demo video of the Dynamic Ensemble-based Scenarios for Impact-based Decision Support Services (DESI) GSL and the NWS released an upgraded decision support tool, DESI 2.0, on October 28, 2022....

The NOAA Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) and the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) have collaboratively developed METexpress, a lightweight, quick-start visualization suite used to retrieve and view data from the advanced Model Evaluation Tools (METplus). METplus is a unified verification system for community model development efforts, and marks a major advancement...

The Department of Commerce Bronze Medal is are the highest honor award granted by the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and recognizes federal employees for superior performance and is awarded to individuals, groups (or teams), and organizations. Congratulations to all our GSL, CIRES, and CIRA recipients!

NOAA Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) scientists, in collaboration with scientists from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and NVIDIA, investigated the use of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to extract information for tropical cyclone (TC) forecasting. The goal of the collaboration was to develop the infrastructure...

Computing capacity is crucial for advances in data processing in weather and climate models, but as newer model versions have increased data resolution, on-site capacity may not be sufficient. On September 21st, 2022, the NOAA National Weather Service and NOA Global Systems Laboratory development teams were able to demonstrate that...

Tracking raindrops from cloud to ground to river and ocean in the San Francisco Bay Area. Heavy rain events are a hazard for California’s San Francisco Bay area and can overwhelm the water and wastewater infrastructure. The Advanced Quantitative Precipitation Information (AQPI) is a regional project awarded to NOAA and...

The Weather Archive and Visualization Environment (WAVE) is an online tool used by NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters to create consistent, understandable graphics for use in decision support, on social media, and in presentations. WAVE is being developed in partnership with the NWS, and can be accessed with NOAA...

The 11th Science On a Sphere® (SOS) Users Collaborative Network Workshop was held virtually August 30 – September 1, 2022 with 159 people registered from almost 100 institutions and 8 countries. The workshop was part of the ongoing SOS partnership with NOAA Global Systems Laboratory, NOAA Office of Education, and...

GSL has partnered with the NOAA Climate Program Office, the NOAA Office of Education the U.S. State Department, NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab, and Meta (Facebook) to bring Urban Heat Island (UHI) (definition at bottom) data to the 27th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP 27) taking place in...

NOAA’s experimental Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS) was demonstrated at the Aviation Weather Testbed Summer Experiment from September 13-16. The Aviation Weather Testbed is hosted by the Aviation Weather Center and works to improve aviation forecasting in order to strengthen pilot and passenger safety and ease the decision-making process of...

Tracking smoke and its effect on the surrounding environment is an important area of research in both global and regional numerical weather prediction systems. This new research begins the process of creating an ensemble-based system for forecasting wildfire smoke. Researchers extended the National Severe Storms Laboratory’s Warn-on Forecast System (WoFS)...

GSL/CIRA researcher Ryan Lagerquist has received the 2022 CIRA Research Initiative Award. Lagerquist’s work is at the forefront of using new Machine Learning (ML)/Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods for meteorological applications and he contributed greatly to four different applications in less than two years at CIRA. Ryan works closely with researchers...

The GSL Hazard Services Team has received the National Weather Association Larry R. Johnson Special Award. Because of their work, 20 NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) Offices were able to evaluate and issue long-duration winter and non-precipitation weather watches, warnings, and advisories for millions of people from 2020-2022, years ahead...

Dr. Kingfield is honored for skillfully navigating the COVID-19 pandemic to implement the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) Hazard Services workflows that will greatly modernize the forecast and warning operations at National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs). The operational implementation of Hazard Services workflows became significantly delayed...

GSL is proud to announce our own recipients of the prestigious American Meteorological Society (AMS) awards for 2023! Dr. Stanley G. Benjamin (retired) received the Cleveland Abbe Award for Distinguished Service to Atmospheric Science. Dr. Benjamin has an outstanding scientific and service record at the nexus of meteorological research and...

The Camp Fire in Paradise, California, was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history, and the most expensive natural disaster in the world in 2018. The wildfire claimed 88 lives and blanketed millions of people in Northern California with dense smoke for two weeks. The Camp Fire is...

GSL hosted 19 undergraduate and graduate students this summer as part of the largest internship class ever. The students come from a variety of programs, and for the first time, GSL partnered with CIRES to create a summer internship program for 11 students. Our other interns are through the NOAA...