Chapter 7. Atmospheric and Oceanic Research in CIRES:
Atmospheric Physics, Cryospheric and Polar Processes,and Climate Dynamics
Growth and Development of the Climate Program
The permanent staff at CIRES was strengthened by the arrival of Professor
Colin Ramage from the University of Hawaii as a visiting fellow in
1981, and it was significantly enhanced by the emeritus status of Professor
Herbert Riehl during its developing years. The Climate Group from
its inception contributed considerably to the preparation of the Cooperative
Atmosphere Ocean Data Set (COADS), jointly with the National
Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in the mid-1980s.
In 1982, the Climate Research Project was incorporated into an Environmental
Science Group within NOAA-ERL as one of four groups that
had tasks cutting across the work in the laboratories. The Project identi-
fied three broad objectives:
- construction of a global data set to describe climatic fluctuations
during the past 130 years over oceans and continents-essentially, a
full-globe version of COADS;
- interpretive diagnostic studies of those climatic fluctuations on time
scales ranging from one month to decades;
- modeling studies of polar ice sheets to clarify their evolution and
their responses to climate change.
One of the Climate Group's major projects, the development of
COAD, was launched by Joe Fletcher (who by then had moved to Boulder
as Deputy Director of NOAA/ERL) and was carried out by Ralph
Slutz, Scott Woodruff and Congbin Fu, visiting from the Institute of
Atmospheric Physics, Beijing. The availability of this continually expanding
record was a major stimulus to research on ocean climate. During
1985 to 1990, Colin Ramage played a major role in investigating the
value of the COADS ship weather observations for climate change analysis.
He also continued his studies of El Niño/Southern Oscillation
(ENSO) phenomena and served on the Council for Equatorial Pacific
Ocean Climate Studies (EPOCS). EPOCS evolved into the Tropical
Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA) project in 1986. Oswaldo Garcia
prepared an important atlas of tropical highly-reflective clouds using visible
satellite imagery.
A more recent major contribution to understanding of the role of the
tropics in global climate change has been the data provided by the Trans-
Pacific Profiler Network. This network of wind-measuring instruments at
tropical island sites that span the Pacific Ocean basin, is operated by the
Tropical Dynamics and Climate Program of NOAA's Aeronomy Laboratory
[ About this Lab ]
and was developed in collaboration with NOAA's Environmental
Technology Laboratory. These data are of great value to ongoing studies
of climate variability within CIRES.
The Climate Group was further strengthened by the transfer of Professor
Roger Barry (geography) from the Institute of Arctic and Alpine
Research to CIRES in 1980. Barry was also director of the World Data
Center (WDC) for Glaciology and at the time there were about 10 staff
involved in data set documentation and inventory for the NOAA/Environmental
Data and Information Service (EDIS). Early projects focused
on sea ice and snow cover charts and an ice core inventory.
Ice sheet modeling studies for Antarctica and Greenland, and for the
northern ice cap of Mars, were pursued by Radok in collaboration with
University of Melbourne glaciologists. They were led by Professor Bill
Budd and several of them (Dick Jenssen, Ian Smith, and Barry McInnes)
took up brief visiting appointments in CIRES during 1980 to 1986. Results
included a synthesis of the physical characteristics of the Greenland
ice sheet and its climate, and an assessment of the potential for surges
from the Antarctic ice sheet.
These studies combined and expanded the various projects of the original
CIRES Climate Group and formed the basis for a rich variety of research
activities throughout the 1980s. Roger Barry served as associate
director for the Atmospheric and Climate Dynamics Division,
1984-1985. During that time, the climate group included four fellows
(Barry, Radok, Ramage, and Diaz). A limiting factor at this time was the
lack of a coherent climate-related instructional program at CU-Boulder
and the corresponding lack of an adequate number of regular faculty
members with a primary interest in climate studies among the fellows.
One possible opportunity to achieve better balance was missed in 1985,
when the Graduate School authorized an additional faculty position for
CIRES. The fellows' vote, which represented all of the scientific fields
then within the scope of CIRES, was evenly divided between a climatologist
and an additional chemist. The tie was broken by vote of the director,
as chair of the Council of Fellows, for the chemist. Barry resigned as associate
director of the Division and turned his efforts to the snow and ice
group. The imbalance within CIRES, and the atmospheric sciences in
particular, was remedied with the development of the Program in Atmospheric
and Oceanic Sciences a few years later. In the meantime,
the late 1980s represented a period of considerable growth in the snow
and ice group, as discussed in the next section.
Simultaneously, a Climate Research Division was designated under the
Air Resources Laboratory, NOAA, 1987-1989, and then under the Climate
Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory (CMDL), 1990-1992. In
1993, a Climate Diagnostics Center (CDC) was established in NOAA/
ERL. The CDC was built on the Climate Research Division of the CMDL
with joint staffing through NOAA/ERL and CIRES. The CDC then evolved
into the NOAA-CIRES Climate Diagnostics Center, with close links to
CIRES through NOAA fellows of CIRES and staff members. The full story
of the CDC may be found at the URL http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/~drm/history. This website includes a complete list of publications by scientists in CDC and its predecessor organizations since 1987.
In the early 1990s the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science
(PAOS) was developed by Professor Peter Webster. Although PAOS is not
organized within CIRES, it is closely linked through faculty fellows. Subsequent
new appointments included Amanda Lynch, who brought to
CIRES a regional arctic modeling capability; Andy Moore, whose ocean
modeling expertise revisited the original focus of the Climate Group; and
Tom Chase through CIRES and Geography, who added global modeling
interests.
Next > Cold Climates: Cryospheric and Polar Processes at CIRES
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