cbs4denver.com (13 May 2008)

View this CBS news story where Warren Washington and Aaron Anderson discuss 'Bluefire', the new 76-Teraflop IBM Supercomputer installed at NCAR, May 2008. [view video]

Discovery News (13 May 2008)

Hurricane forecasters are adopting a new system that lets them combine Doppler radar systems to watch a hurricane revving up in real time just before coming ashore.

The Vortex Objective Radar Tracking and Circulation (VOTRAC) system does what satellite imagery, aircraft and individual Doppler radars cannot by piecing together all the wind data on a storm every six minutes into a more complete and accurate picture of what as storm is doing. [read more]

Science Daily (10 May 2008)

Summertime brings the right mix of conditions for thunderstorms, but pinning down their exact location makes forecasting summer weather unpredictable. A group of researchers is trying to change that, and the results could have a huge impact on our economy. [read more]

Popular Science (30 April 2008)

When it comes to climate change, a quick fix won't do. Science published a paper Friday, by Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which concludes that a proposed plan to inject the atmosphere with sulfate particles in order to cool the planet would actually have dire consequences. [read more]

sciencemag.org (18 April 2008)

The international team of climate change scientists that produced an influential series of reports last year--and won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize--will be doing things a little differently in the future. [read more]

MIT News (16 April 2008)

Edward Lorenz, an MIT meteorologist [and frequent NCAR lecturer] who tried to explain why it is so hard to make good weather forecasts and wound up unleashing a scientific revolution called chaos theory, died April 16 of cancer at his home in Cambridge. He was 90. A professor at MIT, Lorenz was the first to recognize what is now called chaotic behavior in the mathematical modeling of weather systems. [read more]

The New York Times (11 April 2008)

The charged and complex debate over how to slow down global warming has become a lot more complicated. [read more]

Indian Country (02 April 2008)

Glaciers disappearing on Tanganyika's Mount Kilimanjaro; large ships sailing the Northwest Passage nearly year-round; eagle migrations shrinking in numbers on Blackfoot lands in Canada; fish populations dwindling in Puget Sound; sea levels rising and permafrost shrinking elsewhere - these were among the signs that confronted the more than 150 people from the United States and abroad who attended the Planning for Seven Generations: Indigenous & Scientific Approaches to Climate Change conference in Boulder on March 20. It has been 40 million years since Earth experienced a warming at the pace found today and, accordingly, it has not been experienced by humans, NCAR senior scientist Jeff Kiehl told conferees attendees. [read more]

KUNC 91.5 - Kirk Siegler interview with NCAR's Beth Holland (31 March 2008)

Public opinion polls in the United States continue to show significant skepticism that global warming is happening. Some scientists believe that's because, for the most part, our lives have yet to change much. A group of scientists and Native American leaders meeting in Boulder this month sought ways to change this perception. KUNC's (public radio) Kirk Siegler interviewed NCAR scientist Beth Holland. (mp3 direct link; link to station's page)

Stanford News Service (20 March 2008)

Nineteen environmental researchers from across North America have been awarded Leopold Leadership Fellowships for 2008. Based at Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment, the Leopold Leadership Program selects up to 20 mid-career academic environmental scientists as fellows each year, who receive intensive communication and leadership training to help them deliver scientific information more effectively.  Congratulations to NCAR scientists Joan Kleypas and Patricia Romero Lankao, who were among the nineteen honorees. [read more]

Boulder Women's Magazine (11 March 2008)

An in depth Q&A with Nobel Laureates Susan Solomon, Beth Holland, Bette Otto-Bliesner, Linda Mearns, Paty Romero-Lankao and Kathleen Miller. [read more]

Discovery News (04 March 2008)

Proposals to mask global warming by mimicking the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions have hit a little snag: Far more dust could be needed than expected. Philip Rasch is the lead author of a paper on the modeling experiment which appeared in the latest issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. [read more]

Associated Press (03 March 2008)

Those beautiful snowflakes drifting out of the sky may have a surprise inside — bacteria. Most snow and rain forms in chilly conditions high in the sky and atmospheric scientists have long known that, under most conditions, the moisture needs something to cling to in order to condense. Charles Knight, a cloud physics expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., wasn't surprised by the finding, however.  At relatively warm temperatures of just a few degrees below freezing, bacteria are "remarkably effective" at attracting ice formation, said Knight, who was not part of the research group. [read more]

USA Today (23 February 2008)

The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era by Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center. Robert Henson, a writer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and author of The Rough Guide to Climate Change, says: "This is an important part of science history, and Peterson and his co-authors have done a great job of excavating it. [read more]

MSNBC.com (19 February 2008)

In the 50 years since satellites first went into orbit, the readings they've provided have given science a huge boost. Now scientists are trying to give a boost to a new generation of satellites that will monitor the changes sweeping over our planet. In one example of their importance, satellites have tracked threats to the ozone layer, which protects Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation, since the 1970s. Findings helped lead to the Montreal Protocol, a treaty that limits the production of ozone-destroying industrial chemicals. Thanks to the treaty, scientists expect the ozone layer to make a complete recovery by 2071, said John Gille. [read more]

WSAW.com (15 February 2008)

Right now, activity on the sun is very quiet, but that will soon be changing. The solar cycle is the 11-year cycle of activity on the sun. There are more active periods and quieter periods. "In the last month, there have been the first signs of the new solar cycle just starting,” says Stan Solomon, Deputy Director of the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. That means that in about 4 or 5 years, geomagnetic storms could be much more frequent. [read more]

BBC News (09 February 2008)

Some coral reefs could be protected from the impacts of climate change by an "ocean thermostat", a study says. "Global warming is damaging many corals," lead author Joan Kleypas (NCAR) explains, "but it appears to be bypassing certain reefs that support some of the greatest diversity of life on the planet. [read more]

Science Daily (08 February 2008)

A nationwide initiative starting this month will enable volunteers to track climate change by observing the timing of flowers and foliage. Project BudBurst, operated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and a team of partners, allows students, gardeners, and other citizen scientists in every state to enter their observations into an online database that will give researchers a detailed picture of our warming climate. [read more]

San Francisco Bay Guardian (06 February 2008)

Green pathways out of poverty was just one topic discussed during the SFSU segment of "Focus the Nation" — billed as the nation's largest-ever teach-in, with more than 1,500 schools and universities participating.

Keynote speaker Michael Glantz of the National Center for Atmospheric Research jumped on the generational bandwagon, predicting the 21st century would be remembered as the climate century. [read more]

Climate Change Corp.com (30 January 2008)

Large-scale wildfires in a western or south-eastern US state can pump as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in a few weeks as the state’s entire motor vehicle traffic does in a year. This according to a timely newly published piece of research by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

The paper by Christine Wiedinmyer and Jason Neff is entitled ‘Estimates of CO₂ from fires in the US: implications for carbon management’ and is published in Carbon Balance and Management. [read more]

Houston Business Journal (28 January 2008)

Sen. John Kerry will deliver the keynote address at a conference focusing on climate change on Feb. 9 at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Sen. Kerry's address, titled "The Road from Bali: The Future of American Policy on Global Climate Change," opens the conference at 8a.m. Timothy Killeen, director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, will later discuss the International Panel on Climate Change 2007 Report. [read more]

Associated Press (28 January 2008)

A lively and sometimes scrappy debate on whether global warming is fueling bigger and nastier hurricanes like Katrina is adding an edge to a gathering of forecasters here.

The venue for the 88th annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society could not have been more conducive to the discussion: The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center is where thousands of people waited for days during the storm to be evacuated from a city drowning in water and misery.

Greg Holland is among scientists who say there is a link between global warming and an upswing in catastrophic storms. He said other factors far outweigh the influence of wind shear on how a storm will behave. [read more]

American Geophysical Union (24 January 2008)

NCAR Director and AGU President, Tim Killeen, participated in a press conference today, to announce AGU's revised statement on climate change.  The statement newly released by the world's largest scientific society of Earth and space scientists—the American Geophysical Union, or AGU—updates the organization's position on climate change: the evidence for it, potential consequences from it, and how to respond to it. The statement is the first revision since 2003 of the climate-change position of the AGU, which has a membership of 50,000 researchers, teachers, and students in 137 countries. [read more]

CSRwire.com (08 January 2008)

The Center for Sustainable Innovation (CSI) announced today the successful completion of an initial pilot of its Social Footprint Method. The Social Footprint Method (SFM) is an advanced corporate sustainability measurement and reporting tool which measures social sustainability performance against standards of performance. Based on the so-called WRE350 scenario, developed by Tom M. L. Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO. [read more]

NCAR's CISL Lab (28 December 2007)

The Visualization and Analysis Platform for Ocean, Atmosphere, and Solar Researchers is helping scientists model complex processes that require very large datasets. This data compression software is quickly gaining recognition throughout the scientific community. [read more]

UCAR Quarterly (21 December 2007)

The NCAR Library is looking beyond its own walls more than ever. New director, Mary Marlino, brings experience in digital collections [read more]

San Jose Mercury News (19 December 2007)

Phil Rasch, a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., has studied a number of geoengineering methods. Using a computer model, he recently looked at the idea of using a ship to suck up seawater and blast sea salt particles up into the sky. The particles would change the brightness of clouds, reducing the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth’s surface and thereby cooling the planet.
Rasch determined such a method might work - if you seeded 25 percent of the clouds over the ocean, especially if you focused on the Southern Hemisphere. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s advocating the idea. [read more]

Scoop (14 December 2007)

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore delivered his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize during a ceremony in the City Hall in Oslo December 10, 2007. "So today we dumped another 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun". During the speech, Mr. Gore quoted research by Dr. Greg Holland (MMM/ESSL). [read more]

First Science (11 December 2007)

Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and IBM Watson Research Center has set U.S. records for size, performance, and fidelity of computer weather simulations, modeling the kind of "virtual weather" that society depends on for accurate weather forecasts. "The scientific challenge we're addressing is the question in numerical weather prediction of how to take advantage of coming petascale computing power," said weather scientist Josh Hacker of NCAR. [read more]

NetworkWorld.com (11 December 2007)

Researchers were looking for a way to produce more accurate weather forecasts; what they got was US records for size, performance, and detail of computer weather simulations. NCAR team members in the record-setting endeavor include John Michalakes, Josh Hacker, and Rich Loft. [read more]