Announcements

CO-LABS' 2022 Governor’s Award for High-Impact Research go to multiple CIRES teams this year: CIRES/University of Colorado Boulder and NOAA researchers contributed to two of the four projects—one for rapid-response science in service to communities after the Marshall Fire, and another for a breakthrough space weather model that serves several economic sectors with better impact forecasts.

Huge congrats to CIRES fellows Jennifer Balch and Jose-Luis Jimenez, who were recognized as Highly Cited 2022 Researchers by Clarivate Analytics. Several former CIRES researchers were also recognized as Highly Cited Researchers this year—Donna Berg-Lyons, Jonathan Leff, John Miller, Steve Montzka, and Colm Sweeney.

Congratulations to Susan Cobb, she received a 2022 Literacy Award from the Boulder Flatirons Rotary Club for her work with GSL students and interns, and her commitment to communicating science to diverse audiences!

Huge congrats to CIRES Fellow Roger Bilham, who received the AGU Charles A. Whitten Medal for 2022! Learn more. Bilham is one of 36 recipients who are receiving AGU’s highest honors for their excellence in scientific research, education, communication, and outreach.

CIRES Fellow and WWA Director Ben Livneh was announced as American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) 2022 Hydrologic Sciences Early Career Award recipient. Being selected as a Section Honoree is bestowed upon individuals for meritorious work or service toward the advancement and promotion of discovery and solution science. AGU, a nonprofit organization that supports 130,000 enthusiasts to experts worldwide in Earth and space sciences, annually recognizes a select number of individuals as part of its Honors and Recognition program.

Livneh is recognized by the global Earth and space sciences community for his tremendous personal sacrifices and selfless dedication to advancing Earth and space sciences.  Livneh's nominator, CIRES Fellow and CU Boulder Professor Balaji Rajagopalan, described Livneh's research as fundamental to advancing our understanding of hydrologic processes and drought. Rajagopalan also highlighted Livneh's remarkable productivity, his passion for teaching and mentoring students and his humility.

AGU will formally recognize this year’s recipients during #AGU22 Fall Meeting, 12-16 December 2022 in Chicago, IL and online everywhere. This celebration is a chance for AGU’s community to recognize the outstanding work of our colleagues and be inspired by their accomplishments and stories. 

The CU Excellence in Leadership Program has selected Max Boykoff as a participant in the 2022/2023 academic year. ELP, hosted by the CU system Employee Services office, provides opportunities for faculty and staff from all four campuses to become more effective leaders who are prepared to address the challenges of a dynamic university.

CIRES Fellow Lisa Dilling was appointed to the National Academy's Board on Environmental Change and Society!

Eric Schnepp, NOAA GSL, won a 2021 CIRES Bronze Medal for the successful transition and award of $553 million High Performance Computing Integrator contract 3 months ahead of schedule with no protests.

A team in NOAA GSL (Ravan Ahmadov, Hannah Barnes, Jeff Duda, Jason English, Gouging Ge, Jeffrey Hamilton, Siwei He, Eric James, Willian Moniger, Tanya Smirnova, Molly Smith, Michael Toy, Samual Trahan, Hong Wang) won an 2021 Administrator's Award for completion of the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh weather model project that improves forecasts and warnings for high-impact weather events.

Eric James and Tanya Smirnova, NOAA GSL, won an 2021 Outstanding Scientific Paper Award.

And a team in NOAA GML (Geoff Dutton, Pengfei Yu, Eric Ray, Debra Mondeel, Carolina Siso, J. David Nance, Lei Hu, Fred Moore, Ben Miller and James Elkins) won a 2021 Outstanding Paper award for identifying an unexpected and persistent increase in global emissions of ozone-depleting CFC-11.

CU Boulder’s fire resources page has an excellent, comprehensive list of resources for employees impacted by fires.

Congratulations to Noah Fierer, Jose-Luis Jimenez, Jonathan Leff (formerly CIRES), Jennifer Kay, and Julienne Stroeve — CIRES scientists recognized as 2021 “Highly Cited Researchers” by Clarivate for Academia & Government. Full list, w/others from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Congrats to NCEI's Ed Gille for winning a CIRES Bronze Medal for implementing a repeatable process to certify scientific data services as trusted sources of information to the international community.

Congrats to PSL's Antonietta Capotondi, Gijs de Boer, Ola Persson, Matthew Shupe and Amy Solomon, they won a CIRES Bronze Medal for the development of a fully coupled, ocean-ice-atmosphere model that delivers daily, 0-10 day, sea ice forecast guidance to the NWS Alaska Region.

Congrats to GSL's Eric James and Tanya Smirnova--they won a CIRES Bronze Medal for improving lake-effect snow and ice forecasts through a rapid transition of an innovative coupling of weather and coastal hydrodynamic models.

Congrats to GSL researchers Raffaele Montuoro, Kate Zhang, Haiqin Li and Stewart McKeen, they won a NOAA Bronze Medal for the development of the Global Ensemble Forecast System - Aerosols (GEFS-Aerosols) model to support air quality alerts and visibility forecasts.

The 2021 Outstanding Performance Awards are posted! Click here for details.

Congrats to our 2021 CIRES Graduate Student Research Award recipients! Andrew Jensen, Dongwook Kim, Jackson Jandreau, Marium Fernanders, Mitchell Alton, Vanessa Gabel, and Victoria Scholl.

A huge congrats to our CIRES Highly cited researchers! Recognized by Clarivate as pioneers in their fields over the last decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations. An amazing accomplishment by: Doug Day, Noah Fierer, Jose-Luis Jimenez, and Julienne Stroeve! NOAA's Steve Montzka, Mike Alexander, and Colm Sweeney also received the honor.

The Heterodox Academy has selected CIRES Fellow and environmental economist Matthew Burgess as the recipient of its 2020 Open Inquiry Award for teaching.

Ben R. Miller, Carolina Siso, Debra Mondeel, Eric Ray, Fred Moore, Matthew Martinsen, Geoff S. Dutton, J. David Nance, Lei Hu, and Pengfei Yu in GML and CSL won a NOAA Gold Medal, nominated by OAR, for discovering the recent production and release of CFC-11, indicating a major violation of the Montreal Protocol.

Cathy Smith, Chesley McColl, Don Hooper, Gil Compo, Prashant Sardeshmukh, Laura Slivinski and Chesley McColl, Laura Silvinski, and Lawrence Spencer in PSL — they received a NOAA Silver Medal, nominated by OAR, for creating a 200-year Historic Reanalysis dataset of global weather and extremes from only surface pressure and sea surface temperature observations.

Philip Pegion in PSL won a NOAA Gold Medal, nominated by NWS, for development and accelerated implementation of NOAA’s flagship Global Forecast System GFSv15.1, a foundation for FV3 based Unified Forecast System.

Juan Rodriguez, Margaret Tilton, and William Rowland in NCEI won a NOAA Gold Medal, nominated by NESDIS, for innovative engineering and science approach that avoided $28M in repair cost to deliver NOAA instruments to Metop-C to improve weather forecast.

Barry Eakins, Brian Meyer, Elliot Lim, Erin LeFevre, Finn Dahl, and Rick Saltus in NCEI won a NOAA Gold Medal for successful orchestration of seafloor mapping & data science initiatives imperative to fulfill U.S. Extended Continental Shelf (ECS) project goals.

Christian Bethge, Athanasios Boudouridis, Stefan Codrescu, Jonathan Darnel, Kevin Hallock, J. Marcus Hughes, Fadil Inceoglu, Juan Rodriguez, Brian Kress, Larisza Krista, Anna Liao, Paul Loto'aniu, Janet Machol, Margaret Tilton, Courtney Peck, William Rowland, Sam Califf, Daniel Seaton, Jason Shapiro, Pamela Wyatt, Erika Zetterlund in NCEI/NESDIS won a NOAA Administrator's award for achieving a fully operational GOES-R constellation, culminating a decades-long effort.

GSL’s Hagen Telg and CSL’s Laurel Watts, Richard McLaughlin, and Troy Thornberry won a NOAA Technology Transfer award for creating a unique instrument to measure atmospheric particles and helping a small company successfully commercialize it to yield over $1 million.

A SWPC CIRES team won a NOAA Gold Medal, nominated by NWS, for the planning, development, and implementation of a brand new space weather forecast service to support international aviation requirements.

A CSL team including Aaron Lamplugh, Adam Ahern, Ale Franchin, Ann Weickmann, Brian McDonald, Carrie Womack, Carsten Warneke, Catherine Rasco, Christina Williamson, Frank Erdesz, Georgios Gkatzelis, Ilann Bourgeois, J. Andy Neuman, Jeff Peischl, Joseph Katich, Karl Froyd, Ken Aikin, Kyra Slovacek, Laurel Watts, Macy Morgan, Matt Coggon, Max Holloway, Megan Bela, Michael Robinson, Michael Zucker, Nicholas L. Wagner, Pamela Rickly, Paul Schroeder, Richard Tisinai, Stuart McKeen, Troy Thornberry, Zachary Decker won a NOAA Administrator's award for Fire-EX: For the planning and conduct of the largest interdisciplinary research project ever to study wildfire smoke composition, chemistry, and evolution.

CIRES Fellow and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Maggie Tolbert is joining the CIRES administration as Associate Director. A CIRES Fellow since 1992, Tolbert will be working with CIRES Director Waleed Abdalati and Associate Director for Science Christine Wiedinmyer on a number of activities, including a new strategic plan for the institute and the competition for the next Cooperative Agreement with NOAA, which would provide another 10 years of support for CIRES. Read the full story here.

Dave Allured and Irina Djajalova in PSL won a NOAA Administrator's award for implementing and upgrading NOAA’s Air Quality Forecasting Capability for improving the lives of Americans and saving billions of dollars per year.

Matthew Martinsen in GMD won a NOAA Bronze Medal (Group – Scientific/Engineering Achievement) for eliminating any potential Mauna Loa Observatory sources of CFC-11 and other trace gases to ensure integrity of long-term data records.

CIRES, CU Boulder and other colleagues: please join us Wednesday for a celebration of Koni Steffen's life.

CIRES Fellow Rainer Volkamer, a CU Boulder professor of chemistry, is one of 20 international scholars awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award from Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The award provides funding and support for collaborative research with German colleagues. More info

UPDATE: As of July 14, 2020, this ICE guidance has been rescinded and international students at CU Boulder will be able to continue their incredible contributions.

A message for our International Students from CIRES, INSTAAR, Geology leadership

Dear CU Geosciences community:

Like many of you, we are appalled by the recent ICE communication, announced Monday July 6th, regarding F-1 and M-1 status international students and online study. It is an attack on valued members of our departments, our institutes and our entire enterprise. It loads further anxiety and uncertainty onto many who are already coping with difficult or restricted research environments. And it increases the sense of isolation and lack of representation among a group who are indeed underrepresented. Read the rest of the statement here.

Brian Meyer, Justin Mabie, and Terrence Bullett in NCEI won a NOAA Bronze Medal (Personal and Professional Excellence) for securely relocating environmental records from Colorado to North Carolina, preserving and ensuring accessibility to the data and reducing costs.

A team including CU Boulder Chemistry scientists Benjamin Nault, Demetrios Pagonis, Donna Seuper, Douglas Day, Hongyu Guo, Jose-Luis Jimenez, Mindy Schueneman, Pedro Campuzano-Jost, Derek Price as well as CSL’s Aaron Lamplugh, Adam Ahern, Ann Weickmann, Caroline Womack, Carsten Warneke, Frank Erdesz, Georgios Gkatzelis, Ilann Bourgeois, J. Andy Neuman, Jeff Peischl, Joseph Katich, Ken Aikin, Macy Morgan, Matt Coggon, Michael Robinson, Michael Zucker, Nicholas Wagner, Pamela Rickly, Zachary Decker, Wyatt Brown, Ravan Ahmadov, and Ale Franchin won a NOAA Bronze Medal for outstanding execution of the FIREX-AQ mission, a joint venture with NASA to improve understanding of air quality and climate impacts of fires. Congrats!

This week, the National Academy of Sciences announced that it had elected two CU Boulder researchers at the forefront of atmospheric chemistry and GPS science to its prestigious membership.

Kristine Larson and CIRES Fellow Veronica Vaida (Chemistry) will join more than 140 other United States-based and international scientists receiving this recognition in 2020. The honor is often considered one of the highest that scientists can receive during their careers.

More: https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/04/28/2-researchers-join-ranks-natio...

Congratulations to CIRES' Carrie Wall Bell! She's one of 25 CU Boulder researchers awarded seed funding from CU Boulder's Research & Innovation Office. Bell, who works in NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, will work with a professor of Computer Science on: "Finding Little Fish in Big Data: Automated Pattern Analysis and Anomaly Detection in the Fisheries Acoustic Archive." More...

CU ALERT: On Thursday, 3/12/20, CU Boulder was notified that an employee has received a presumptive positive test for COVID-19. https://alerts.colorado.edu/

A Boulder Daily Camera headline Wednesday morning incorrectly stated CIRES is closing. Rather, as the story itself reported, the CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy (CSTPR) will close May 31.

CIRES Fellow Max Boykoff is the 2020 faculty recipient of the University of Colorado's Thomas Jefferson Award. The award is among the highest honors given by the CU system, and honors excellent performance in regular responsibilities accompanied by noteworthy service to the broader commuinty. Dr. Boykoff will be recognized April 15 in a Dennver ceremony.

Congratulations to NOAA's Eric Hackathorn; CIRES' Hilary Peddicord, Beth Russell, and Jonathan Joyce; and CIRA's Keith Searight, recipients of the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) 2020 Impact Award! The team was recognized "for their stellar work to bring Science On a Sphere Explorer™ and SOSx Mobile to the public." The FLC Impact Award honors employees of FLC member laboratories and non-laboratory staff whose technology transfer efforts have made a lasting and tangible impact on the populace or marketplace, ranging from a local to a global scale.

Congratulations to CIRES Director Waleed Abdalati, elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science! CUBoulder anthropologist Matt Sponheimer also earned the honor. http://bit.ly/2019AAAS

Congratulations to the 13 CU Boulder researchers who made "highly cited" status this year, according to the Web of Science Group at Clarivate Analytics! Four are from CIRES: Jose Jimenez, Noah Fierer, Julienne Stroeve, and former Ph.D. student Jonathan Leff. More: https://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2019/

Congratulations to the 13 CU Boulder researchers who made "highly cited" status this year, according to the Web of Science Group at Clarivate Analytics! Four are from CIRES: Fellow Jose Jimenez (Chemistry); Fellow Noah Fierer (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology); National Snow and Ice Data Center scientist Julienne Stroeve; and former Ph.D. student Jonathan Leff, who worked in Fierer's lab. Web of Science identified Fierer as one of only 11 people in the world who achieved highly cited status in 3 fields (agricultural science, environment/ecology, and microbiology). And congrats, too, to NOAA Boulder colleagues Stephen Montzka, John Miller, Colm Sweeney and Michael Alexander, who also made the list. More: https://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2019/

CO-LABS has announced the winners of the 2019 Governor’s Award for High-Impact Research, and University of Colorado Boulder researchers contributed to all three winning projects. More...

Congrats to CIRES Visiting Fellow Fabian Hoffmann, awarded CU's Outstanding Postdoc Award, reserved for postdocs excelling in research productivity and innovation, communication and leadership!

Four CIRES experts were critical to work just awarded a Department of Commerce Silver Medal! NCEI's Kelly Stroker and colleagues in the National Weather Service received commendation: “for producing high-resolution topographic-bathymetric Digital Elevation Models, informing coastal inundation models for tsunami and hurricane hazards.”

The Department of Commerce Silver Medal recognizes exceptional performance characterized by noteworthy or superlative contributions that have a direct and lasting impact within the Department. Non-federal scientists cannot receive DOC medals, but CIRES will recognize team members Kelly Carignan, Matt Love, Chris Amante, Nic Arcos with a CIRES Silver Medal at our annual Rendezvous science symposium in 2020.

Congratulations to CIRES Fellow and chemist Eleanor Browne, who won an American Society for Mass Spectrometry Research Award!

Congratulations to CIRES Fellow and Chemistry Professor Veronica Vaida, for ACS / APS's Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics, for outstanding interdisciplinary research in chemistry and physics.

Congratulations to CIRES Fellow Rainer Volkamer, honored with the Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award by the American Geophysical Union!

Congratulations to CIRES fellow Xinzhao Chu—she was chosen to give the CEDAR Prize Lecture at this summer’s CEDAR Workshop about her recent science contributions to understanding coupling from the stratosphere to the MLT resulting from Lidar development and observations in McMurdo, Antarctica!

Congrats to CIRES fellow John Cassano, awarded a 2019 Boulder Faculty Assembly Excellence Award in research, scholarly and creative work!

Congratulations to Jose Jimenez, Joost de Gouw, Julienne Stroeve, Noah Fierer, and the late John Wahr, who were named 2018 Highly Cited Researchers in their fields by Clarivate Analytics!

Looking for a postdoctoral or sabbatical research opportunity? CIRES' Visiting Fellows Program is now open for applicants!

Congratulations to two of our CIRES Fellows, Peter Molnar and Craig Jones (CU Boulder Geological Sciences) who received awards at the 2018 Geological Society of America meeting this week! Peter Molnar—International Distinguished Career Award, and Craig Jones—Structural Geology and Tectonics Division, Outstanding publication award!

Congrats to the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) run by CIRES Education & Outreach. CLEAN was named an Exemplary Project by the Goldin Foundation for Excellence in Education!

Congrats to CIRES/NOAA researchers, recieved Honorable Mention from the 2018 CO-LABS Governor's Awards for High Impact Research!

The Wind Forecast Improvement Project-2, a Department of Energy and NOAA-led project, earned the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) Far West Region Award for Outstanding Partnership. The team, including federal and cooperative institute scienctists, "successfully leveraged resources, instruments, and researchers across all NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories (ESRL) Divisions, the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory Field Research Division, other federal agencies, private companies, and universities research leading to improved forecasts of wind to support the renewable energy industry. CIRES recipients include: Jaymes Kenyon, Joe Olson, Laura Bianco, Kathy Lantz, Chuck Long, Yelena Pichugina, Terra Ladwig, Eric James, Katie McCaffrey, Irina Djalalova, Aditya Choukulkar, Tim Bonin, and Brandi McCarty.

Congrats to Steve Montzka and Balaji Rajagopalan—named 2018 AGU Fellows!

Forbes China names CIRES/NOAA's Pengfei Yu in "30 under 30" list of young scholars in science & tech.

Congrats to NSIDC scientist Dr. Shari Fox Gearheard and the team behind the research project and book, “The Meaning of Ice,” they were awarded the inaugural Mohn Prize in Tromso, Norway. The International Mohn Prize recognizes “outstanding research related to the Arctic” and comes with an award of 2 million Norwegian Kroner. The project made “groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of Arctic ice-dominated systems via a highly innovative combination of natural science, social science and Indigenous knowledge.”

Congrats to our stellar CIRES Education & Outreach team involved in Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network—CLEAN won the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) 2017 Friend of the Planet award.

Congratulations CIRES Visiting Fellow Jen Henderson, elected as a AMS Academic Sector Council Member for 2018

Congratulations to our five researchers who made the Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers List in their disciplines: Noah Fierer, Joost de Gouw, José-Luis Jimenez, Mark Serreze, and Julienne Stroeve

Congrats to CIRES Fellow Peter Molnar who received CU Boulder's prestigious Distinguished Professor Honor

Congratulations, Dr. Lewis, new Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science!

Anne Gold receives Chancellor's Award for Excellence in STEM Education.

Congratulations to Athanasios Boudouridis, Abram Claycomb, Stefan Codrescu, Jonathan Darnel, Vicki Hsu, Brian Kress, Larisza Krista, Paul Loto'aniu, Janet Machol, Juan Rodriguez, William Rowland, Daniel Seaton, Margaret Tilton who received the prestigious 2017 NASA Achievement Award for excellence resulting in the successful GOES-R satellite launch, proving the nation’s foundation for the world’s highest quality weather monitoring and forecasting.

Congratulations to David Reynolds for receiving the NOAA Administrator’s award for advancing weather and climate models to balance flood and drought risks while providing water reliability for fish and people in the Western United States.

Greg Tucker awarded AGU Fellow, American Geophysical Union.

A belated congratulations to Ravan Ahmadov, Joost de Gouw, Bill Dubé, Stu McKeen, Christoph Senff, Colm Sweeney, Patrick Veres, Rebecca Washenfelder, Carsten Warneke, Abigail Koss, Chelsea Thompson for receiving an Outstanding Paper Award from NOAA OAR for their work: “High winter ozone pollution from carbonyl photolysis in an oil and gas basin,” published in Nature!

NSIDC's Jeff Deems received Honorable Mention from CO-LABS’ Governor's Award for High-Impact Research, for his work in improving avalanche safety and water resource management.

Paul Johnston and David Costa receive NOAA Technology Transfer Award for being part of a team that designed, implemented, and operated a 21st-Century observing network to address water resource and flood protection issues in the W. United States.

CIRES scientist Elizabeth Weatherhead wins Kenneth C. Spengler Award from AMS, named AMS Fellow

Congratulations to Ron Weaver, NSIDC, for earning a University Medal, in honor of lasting contributions to climate research and data management

Congratulations to all those who contributed to the Physical Sciences Laboratory's El Nino Rapid Response work, which has earned a Department of Commerce Bronze Medal!

Congratulations to Anne Perring for recieving Presidential Honor

Congratulations to Lesley Smith of CIRES Education and Outreach for being named one of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography 2016 class of Fellows!

Four CIRES scientists — Noah Fierer, Jose-Luis Jimenez, Julienne Stroeve and Mark Serreze — were named "2016 Highly Cited Researchers" by Clarivate Analytics

Congratulations to CIRES' Stu McKeen and his NOAA colleagues who are co-authors on an Atmospheric Environment paper that received the 2016 Haagen-Smit Prize

Congratulations to CIRES Fellow Jose-Luis Jimenez (CU Boulder Chemistry and Biochemistry) who is one of just two Fellows elected to the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) this year

Congratulations to CIRES Fellow Jennifer Kay (CU Boulder Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences) for winning the AMS Houghton award

View the CIRES 2015 Annual Report

A team of NOAA and CIRES scientists earned a DOC Gold Medal for their work on the Deep Space Climate Observatory mission, dedicated to space weather. The team, led by NOAA's Doug Biesecker, included CIRES' Alysha Reinard, Jeff Johnson, Michael Burek, Tom DeFoor, Richard Grubb, Ratina Dodani, and Michele Cash

Congratulations to CIRES' Bob Evans and Birgit Hassler for ozone research related awards from the International Ozone Commission!

Meet the team of innovators and inventors in the Integrated Instrument Development Facility!

CIRES Distinguished Lecture Series: Dr. Steve Running webcast starts at 4:00 MDT