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News and Announcements


The latest news and announcements related to the Department of Atmospheric Science appear below. In addition to these items, the department periodically produces an alumni newsletter designed to keep alumni informed about their alma mater. The College of Engineering also provides additional news and announcements.

October 1, 2009

  • Odie Bliss Memorial Bench Dedication Ceremony

    The Department of Atmospheric Science together with the family of Odie Bliss cordially invite you to attend the dedication of a memorial bench in honor of Odie. This event will be held on Thursday October 1, 2009 ATS 101 (large classroom) Fort Collins, Colorado

    The dedication will begin at 2:30pm. Reception to follow

    Come and honor Odie Bliss: her many years of service, student mentoring and unforgettable friendships.

September 16, 2009

  • Prof. Sue van den Heever wins 2009 Professor of the Year Award

    Congratulations to Sue van den Heever, who is the recipient of the Professor of the Year Award for 2009. Each year, the graduate students in the Department select the faculty member they fell best exemplifies the ideal professor both inside and outside the classroom. The award was presented to Prof. van den Heever at the annual new student picnic at Spring Canyon Park in Fort Collins on Sept. 4th.

September 14, 2009

  • James Ruppert wins AMS Student Poster award

    M.S. student James Ruppert's poster - A case study of a large-amplitude inertia-gravity wave over the Southeast - received the Poster Honorable Mention Award at the 13th Conference on Mesoscale Processes held at Salt Lake City on 16-20 August 2009.

August 11, 2009

September 8, 2009

  • CSU-CHILL donates radar antenna to BMRC in Australia

    In early 2008, the CSU-CHILL Facility installed a new offset antenna. This antenna is the first such installation of this technology on an S-band weather radar (see www.chill.clostate.edu for more details). The previous antenna, that being a center fed parabolic antenna, is no longer needed by the Facility. Consequently, this antenna will soon be transferred to the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre where it will be installed on the former NCAR CP-2 radar. This radar is being operated near Brisbane. CSU researchers in Atmospheric Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering will collaborate with Australian researchers on the study of storms in that region.

August 11, 2009

  • Department Picnic Information

    The New Student Welcome Picnic (to meet faculty, staff, and other students) will be held Friday, September 4th at Spring Canyon Park in the picnic shelter on the west end of the park. Introductions of students starts at 11:30 followed by the presentation of the Professor of the Year plaque. Lunch will be served at noon.

July 31, 2009

  • Department welcomes 13 new students

    The Department of Atmospheric Science is glad to welcome our new students to the University! The incoming class of 2009 at the Department of Atmospheric Science is:

    Name Degree University Advisor
    Samuel Atwood M.S. Gonzaga University Kreidenweis
    Ashley Evanoski M.S. Susquehanna University Collett
    Sarah Finn Ph.D. Colorado State University Kummerow
    Matthew Igel M.S. North Carolina State University Stephens
    Daniel Jones Ph.D. University of Kentucky Ito
    Kathryn Mullin M.S. University of Virginia Thompson
    Laura Paulik M.S. University of Georgia at Athens Birner
    James Ruppert M.S. SUNY Albany Johnson
    Adam Rydbeck M.S. University of South Alabama Maloney
    Amanda Sheffield M.S. Purdue University van den Heever
    Stephanie Slade M.S. Indiana State University Maloney
    Rebecca Smith Ph.D. Florida State University Kummerow
    Adam Tripp M.S. Metropolitan State College of Denver Stephens

July 22, 2009

  • Prof. Sue van den Heever on the recent Colorado weather pattern

    In an interview with Today @ Colorado State, Department Prof. Sue van den Heever discusses her background, and weighs in on the 'wet and wild weather' of this summer. Full interview at Today @ Colorado State.

June 22, 2009

  • Darren Van Cleave is a co-recipient of the first-place award for the best M.S./B.S. Student Poster Presentation at AMS

    Congratulations to Darren Van Cleave who is a co-recipient of the first-place award for the best M.S./B.S. Student Poster Presentation at American Meteorological Society's 23rd WAF/19th NWP Conference held on 1-5 June in Omaha, Nebraska.

June 11, 2009

  • Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere wins new cooperative agreement with NOAA

    Colorado State University's Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), will receive up to $64.4 million from the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration as a renewal of the two organizations' research affiliation. Read the full story.

May 12, 2009

  • ATS dedicates its newest facility - ATS West

    CSU Interim President Tony Frank highlighted presentations by CSU and the National Science Foundation as part of a dedication ceremony on May 18 for the department's newest building. ATS West is a $5M, 13,000 sq ft new facility at the College of Engineering, Atmospheric Science Foothills Campus to house the new NSF Science and Technology Center CMMAP (Center for Multi-scale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes), directed by Prof. David A. Randall. The goal of CMMAP is to improve the representation of cloud processes in global climate models.

May 12, 2009

  • Steph Rosso receives Outstanding Administrative Professional Staff Award

    Congratulations to Steph Rosso who received the Outstanding Administrative Professional Staff Award at the All-College Meeting for her hard work and dedication to the Department of Atmospheric Science.

May 8, 2009

  • State Climatologist Nolan Doesken testifies before the House on the National Climate Service

    Nolan Doesken, State Climatologist and President of the American Association of State Climatologists (AASC) testified before the US House of Representatives on May 5, 2009 regarding states perspectives on climate science. You can read his full testimony here.

May 8, 2009

  • Herbert Riehl Memorial and Alumni Award Ceremony

    Congratulations to the Herbert Riehl Memorial and Alumni Award Ceremony winners Kevin Grise and Matt Lebsock! Kevin Grise accepted the Herbert Riehl Memorial Award and Matt Lebsock accepted the Alumni Award for Outstanding Research by a Ph.D. Student.

April 22, 2009

  • Two ATS students awarded NCAR ASP Postdoc Fellowships

    Congratulations to Mike Toy and Jonathan Vigh, who have just been awarded NCAR Advanced Study Program Fellowships. They will begin work at NCAR in connection with these highlycoveted awards in the Fall of 2009.

March 31, 2009

  • Paul DeMott wins Distinguished Atmospheric Science Alumnus Award

    At a College of Engineering award ceremony on March 28 at the Lory Student Center, Senior Research Scientist Paul DeMott was presented the Atmospheric Science Distinguished Alumnus Award. Paul received the award for his world-renowned research on aerosol-cold cloud interactions and his pioneering contributions to the development and application of instrumentation to detect and measure ice nucleating particles in the laboratory and atmosphere. Paul received his PhD in 1991 in the Atmospheric Science Department under the guidance of Professor Lewis Grant, who is now a professor emeritus in our department. Professor Grant attended the ceremony and presented the award to Paul.

February 25, 2009

  • Professor Kreidenweis aerosol article featured in Environmental Research Letters Best of 2008

    Congratulations to Professor Sonia Kreidenweis on being featured in the Environmental Research Letters Best of 2008 collection. The article, "Single-parameter estimates of aerosol water content" is featured among the best and most read articles published in ERL during 2008. Download and read more here.

February 24, 2009

  • CSU Atmospheric Scientists disappointed in OCO Mission Failure

    The Orbiting Carbon Observatory, the latest NASA Earth science mission involving a team of Colorado State University scientists, failed to reach orbit after its 2:55 a.m. MST liftoff from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. NASA reports that "preliminary indications are that the fairing on the Taurus XL launch vehicle failed to separate. The fairing is a clamshell structure that encapsulates the satellite as it travels through the atmosphere." Read more here

February 20, 2009

  • CSU Atmospheric Scientists Front and Center in NASA Mission Measuring Carbon Dioxide

    A team of Colorado State University atmospheric scientists is at the center of NASA's next Earth orbiting science mission, which will map variations of carbon dioxide across the globe. Read more here about the mission.

February 12, 2009

  • Prof. Sue van den Heever wins Royal Meteorological Society Award

    Prof. Sue van den Heever has been awarded the Quarterly Journal Review Award for 2008. This prize is awarded for consistent, distinguished work by reviewers of articles for QJRMS. The award will be presented at a ceremony in Reading, England, on July 1, 2009.

February 4, 2009

  • CSU co-hosts a Remote Sensing Symposium with NCAR and the University of Wyoming

    CSU is co-hosting a Remote Sensing Symposium with NCAR and the University of Wyoming aimed at giving graduate students an introduction to the instrumentation and techniques used to observe the lower atmosphere. The symposium will be held May 31 - June 12, 2009 in Boulder, CO. You can read more about the symposium here.

February 3, 2009

  • Paul DeMott interviewed by ScienceWatch on African dust aerosols

    CSU Senior Research Scientist Paul J. DeMott talks with ScienceWatch.com and answers a few questions about this month's Emerging Research Front Paper in the field of Geosciences about African dust aerosols. You can read more about the article here.

January 26, 2009

  • HP's Workstation Computers Power Hurricane Research at Colorado State University

    HP, a longtime supporter of Colorado State University, has donated performance workstation computers to support alternative energy and climate research efforts in the College of Engineering.

    The HP xw8600 Workstation computers will be used in the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory in support of the lab's efforts to solve some of the world's most challenging environmental problems by developing new alternative energy sources. Also benefitting is Professor Wayne Schubert's hurricane research group in the Department of Atmospheric Science, which will use the workstations for advanced modeling and other research activities. more

January 5, 2009

  • New Faculty Member - Dr. Thomas Birner

    Dr. Thomas Birner joins the department from the University of Toronto, where he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Munich in 2003. His current research pertains to the dynamics of the stratosphere and upper troposphere as well as the fine-scale structure of the extratropical tropopause.

December 16, 2008

  • Atmospheric Science Alumni Reception

    The Atmospheric Science Alumni Reception at the AMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, AZ will be held Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at the Cowboy Artist Room (second floor) in the Hyatt Regency Phoenix, 122 North Second Street (Map). The reception will be from 5:30 - 8:00 pm and hors d'oeuvres and refreshments will be served along with a hosted bar. We hope to see you there!

November 20, 2008

  • Dave Thompson presenting lecture series

    Prof. Dave Thompson is presenting a lecture on 'The Ozone Hole and Climate Change' at the Ben Delatour Room of the Fort Collins Main Public Library. More information about the lecture can be found at the Today @ Colorado State website.

November 14, 2008

  • Scott Denning featured on NASA webcast

    Professor Scott Denning spoke at a NASA panel in Washington D.C. about the global carbon cycle. NASA hosted the seminar to discuss the current state of knowledge about the global carbon cycle. The seminar was hosted at the James E. Webb Auditorium in Washington, D.C. More information about the seminar can be found at the Today @ Colorado State website.

October 05, 2008

  • Jeff Collett wins 2008 Professor of the Year award

    Jeff Collett is the recipient of the Professor of the Year Award for 2008. Each year the graduate students in the department select the faculty member who they feel best exemplifies the ideal professor both inside and outside the classroom. The award was presented to Jeff at the annual new student picnic at City Park on September 5.

September 08, 2008

  • Innovative climate change lecture series for students and the public

    CSU is launching an innovative series of seven public lectures that will run through the school year and consider global warming from a wide variety of perspectives. The series, Climate Change: What We All Need To Know, will kick off on Thursday, Sept. 11, at 7 p.m. in the North Ballroom of Lory Student Center with a talk, "Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future," given by Dr. David Randall of CSU's Department of Atmospheric Science.

    Like the other talks in the series, Randall's will be aimed at both a broad student audience and the greater Fort Collins community and will highlight the best, most up-to-date science and scholarship on the topic. The remaining talks will look at climate change from the perspectives of biological effects, policy and policy makers, economics, effects on people, literature and creative writing, and possible solutions. The series will draw on the breadth and depth of CSU's involvement in climate change research, featuring national experts among its faculty as well as leading scholars and writers from other universities.

    Dr. Randall is one of the world's leading atmospheric scientists whose current research focuses on modeling studies of how clouds affect the global climate system. He is the director of CMMAP: The Center for Multiscale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center headquartered at CSU. For ten years he was the Chief Editor of the Journal of Climate. He was a Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report; the IPCC was awarded a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

    More information on the lecture series may be found at the Today @ Colorado State website.

September 01, 2008

  • CSU Scientist cited for excellence in reviewing

    In the latest edition of EOS, published by the American Geophysical Union, CSU scientist Tristan L'Ecuyer was cited for excellence in reviewing.

August 20, 2008

  • Atmospheric Science welcomes 20 new students

    Twenty new M.S. and Ph.D. students have arrived in Fort Collins to begin their graduate studies as Fall Semester classes begin on August 25. This year's class has an international flavor, with entering students coming from Asia, Europe, and the United States. A department picnic is planned for September 5 at City Park to welcome the new students.

July 30, 2008

  • CSU Professor, scientists win JPL awards

    University Distinguished Professor Graeme Stephens has won the JPL Exceptional Public Service Medal. This award was presented in recognition of his exceptional scientific leadership of the CloudSat mission and for his visionary promotion of combined active and passive measurements for atmospheric research.

    Along with the award presented to Prof. Stephens, Phil Partain, who became associated with CloudSat in 2000 as a data processing engineer and is now a researcher at Colorado State University’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere or CIRA, was also awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal for his design work on the advanced Level 2 data processing infrastructure for the CloudSat Data Processing Center.

    Additionally, several CSU employees on the CloudSat Algorithm Development Team won the Public Service Group Achievement Award for their success in their inventive designs and pioneering approaches to the implementation of algorithms pertaining to CloudSat data processing. These employees include Richard Austin, Angela Benedetti, Philip Gabriel, Laurent Labonnette, Tristan L’Ecuyer, Phil Partain, Igor Polonsky, Dale Reinke, Donald Reinke, Prof. Graeme Stephens, and Norm Wood.

    Most recently, Prof. Stephens has won the International Radiation Commission Gold Medal, presented by the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences, for his contributions to the radiation science community.

July 28, 2008

  • CloudSat yields two years of data about impact of clouds on climate

    The CloudSat mission, led by Colorado State University Professor Graeme Stephens, recently passed its second anniversary on April 28. The two year's worth of data collected by the satellite's vertical imagery technology is significantly adding to our understanding of the effects that clouds have on the thermal energy being emitted from Earth to space, and on the amount of sunlight that passes through the atmosphere.

    Read more about CloudSat's two-year anniversary on the website of Today @ Colorado State

June 9, 2008

  • CSU boasts one of world's most advanced radars

    CSU-CHILL radar image of the May 22, 2008, tornado near Fort Collins. Photo courtesy of Pat Kennedy.

    Colorado State University this spring installed a unique antenna on one of the nation's most advanced polarimetric weather radars to more precisely detect major storms and precipitation. The new antenna gives scientists a "more delicate knife" to evaluate thunderstorms and the size and distribution of rain, hail and snow, said Steven Rutledge, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State and the scientific director of the CSU-CHILL radar facility.

    The radar, located next to the Greeley-Weld County Airport and known as CSU-CHILL, has the capability of seeing a single hail stone in the atmosphere more than 10 miles away. So-called dual polarization technology will be adopted as the new National Weather Service standard starting next year and deployed on the nation's WSR-88D radars, used to warn the public about developing severe weather. The CSU-CHILL radar supports this effort by developing new techniques that will be used on the weather warning radar network.

    The CHILL facility is jointly operated by the Colorado State University departments of Atmospheric Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. In addition to Rutledge, V.N. Bringi and V. Chandrasekar, professors of electrical engineering, serve as principal investigators on the award from the National Science Foundation, which exceeds $3 million over a three-year period.

    To read the full story behind the CSU-CHILL radar, click here. For more information on the CSU-CHILL radar, please visit the CSU-CHILL webpage.

May 20, 2008
  • It is a great pleasure to announce that Susan C. van den Heever will be joining the Atmospheric Science faculty in August 2008.

    Sue received her Ph.D. from the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU in 2001, after coming to the United States from Johannesburg, South Africa, where she received an M.S. degree from the University of Witwatersrand in 1995. Sue's expertise lies in the areas of cloud and mesoscale dynamics, cloud physics, and NWP models. As many of you know, Sue has been working at CSU since her Ph.D. and has taught ATS 540, Daily Weather Laboratory I, in our department for a number of years.

    The hiring of Sue is an outcome of the recent ATS faculty search in the area of mesoscale processes. We thank all of you for your assistance during the search process.

    Please join me in welcoming Sue to the ATS faculty!

May 13, 2008


  • 13-year-old Aboriginal student visits CSU

    This past week, the 13-year-old Aboriginal student and his teacher toured NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Colorado State University's Department of Atmospheric Science program in Fort Collins. Neil is a student at Woolaning, a tiny school near Wangi Falls in Litchfield Park that has 10 students and one teacher, Guna Deva. Darwin, a city of 100,000 people, is the closest major city and it's 120 miles away.

    Woolaning is part of CloudSat's network of some 70 schools around the world where students observe clouds and cloud behavior and send the data back to CloudSat scientists. CSU, along with JPL and other partners launched CloudSat, the world's first cloud-profiling radar, into space on April 28, 2006. From 438 miles above Earth, CloudSat is giving scientists unprecedented information about the nature of clouds and the amount and type of their precipitation.

    To read the full story behind Neil's visit to CSU, click here (link to Today@Colorado State courtesy of Emily Wilmsen)

May 1, 2008
  • Nick Parazoo and Angela Rowe both received the 2008 Herbert Riehl Memorial Award for the best paper submitted for publication in the peer-reviewed literature by an MS student. Eric Hendricks has received the 2008 Alumni Award for best paper submitted for publication by a senior Ph.D. student.

April 30, 2008

  • CloudSat, a joint project of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Colorado State University and other agencies, has received a Rotary National Award for Space Achievement for providing unprecedented perspectives of Earth's clouds.

    CloudSat, which is the world's first cloud-profiling radar in orbit, launched on April 28, 2006, and reached a position 438 miles above Earth. The satellite is part of NASA's "A-Train" of Earth observation satellites and one of the very few university-led earth science missions. Graeme Stephens, a University Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, serves as the principal investigator for the team, which also includes the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Canadian Space Agency. Colorado State's Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere processes CloudSat data for the scientific community.

    The CloudSat team received the award for "exceptional achievement by an international joint government, university and industry team in conceiving, designing, developing and launching the CloudSat spacecraft that provides an unprecedented three-dimensional perspective of Earth's clouds to answer questions about how they form, evolve and affect the weather, climate and fresh water supply."

    The Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation Stellar Awards recognize outstanding individuals and teams from industry and government who have made significant contributions to the U.S. space program. The foundation was established in 1985 by the Space Center Rotary Club.

April 30, 2008

April 19, 2008

  • Thomas Guinn receives 2008 Atmospheric Science Alumni Award. In a ceremony at the Lory Student Center on April 19, Tom Guinn was recognized as the 2008 winner of the ATS Alumni Award. He received his PhD from CSU in 1992, studying hurricane spiral rainbands with Wayne Schubert as his advisor. Tom retired in February 2008 after 22 years in the United States Air Force. While in the military, he served as Deputy Director of weather policy, ASAF Headquarters, Washington, DC; Director of Operations, AF Combat Climatology Center, Asheville, NC; and Weather Squadron Commander, Fort Lewis, WA. While in Asheville, he was honored by the city as Outstanding Federal Manager of the Year. He has received five Meritorious Service Medals, and in 1995 won the AMS Banner I. Miller Award for the most significant contribution to tropical meteorololgy. Tom is currently an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aerolnautical University, Daytona Beach, FL.

April 13, 2008
  • Professor Sonia Kreidenweis wins College of Engineering George T. Abell Outstanding Faculty Teaching and Service Award. This award was presented to Prof. Kreidenweis at a ceremony at the University Center for the Arts on April 10. Sonia was honored for exceptional, sustained contributions to the Atmospheric Science Department in the areas of teaching, advising, and service.

April 13, 2008

  • Construction begins on ATS West, a 13,000 sq ft building on the Atmospheric Science campus. ATS West is a new department facility that will initially house the new National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, Center for Multiscale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes (CMMAP). CMMAP, awarded in 2006 and directed by Professor David Randall, has the goal of improving the representation of cloud processes in global climate models. Construction of ATS West is expected to be completed in late 2008.

February 22, 2008
  • A new antenna and radome has been installed at the CSU-CHILL Radar Facility that will further improve the radar's ability to collect high quality data. Read the full story here.

January 24, 2008

  • The Peter V. Hobbs Symposium will be held on 24 January as part of the AMS Annual meeting in New Orleans, LA. The Symposium will be chaired by Prof. Steven Rutledge and will consist of invited papers and a panel session, the latter organized by the AMS Committee on Cloud Physics.

January 22, 2008
  • Reception for Alumni, Faculty, Students and Friends. Will be Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 5:30-8:30 pm. Location will be at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel in the Melrose Room. For more information please contact Kim (at) atmos.colostate.edu or call 970-491-8360.

January 18, 2008

  • CoCoRaHS, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network out of Colorado State University, will begin its 10th year with the addition of 10 states in 2008 including Louisiana, which will be announced at the American Meteorological Society's Annual Meeting Jan. 20-24 in New Orleans. Read the full story here.

January 18, 2008. The article titled, "Single-parameter estimates of aerosol water content"
  • Eric Maloney joins Atmospheric Science Faculty as Associate Professor. Eric comes to us from Oregon State University where he served on the faculty of the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences (COAS) since 2002. In 2006 he received the COAS Patullo Award for Excellence in teaching. Eric received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington in 2000. His research expertise is in the areas of tropical weather and climate variability and intraseasonal variations in the tropics.

January 16, 2008

  • Nicole Lovenduski, who is a postdoctoral fellow in our department, has been selected to be one of the New Generation of Polar Researchers for the International Polar Year. Niki holds PhD from UCLA and conducts her research on the future of Antarctic climate and carbon cycle. Thirty-four scholars are selected from international and interdisciplinary community of polar scientists including full range of natural and social sciences. We as the department would like to congratulate Niki for the great award.

January 07, 2008
  • Colette Heald joins Atmospheric Science faculty. Colette comes to CSU from UC-Berkeley, where she was a Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow from 2006 to 2007. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2005. Colette's research interests are long-range transport of pollution, aerosol sources, composition, chemistry, and biogenic and anthropogenic influences on chemistry and climate. In 2006, Colette received the Paul Crutzen Award for the best paper at the Young Scientist's Conference on Global Change in Beijing.

October 1, 2007

  • Dave Thompson will receive the 2008 AMS Meisinger Award at the AMS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, 20-24 January 2008. Full Story

September 25, 2007
  • The Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University is seeking applicants for a tenure-track assistant or associate level faculty position in the areas of physics and/or dynamics of weather systems.

September 12, 2007

  • Read about award-winning research conducted by students Amy Butler and Kirsten Koehler.

September 5, 2007
  • Graduate students in the department presented the Professor of the Year award for 2007 to Dr. Chris Kummerow.

June 30, 2007

  • Dr. Eric Maloney will be joining the department faculty as an Associate Professor in early 2008. Eric will come to us from Oregon State University, where he has served as an assistant professor since 2002. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washingon while working with Dennis Hartmann and held a two-year post-doctoral position at NCAR in the ASP program. Eric's research focuses on processes that regulate tropical weather and climate variability. He has done considerable work on intraseasonal convective variability using both observations and general circulation models.

June 29, 2007
  • Russ Schumacher won the 2nd place student oral presentation award at the AMS Weather and Forecasting/Numerical Weather Prediction Conference in Park City, Utah.

June 21, 2007

  • The second Fire Lab At Missoula Experiment (FLAME II) was led by co-PIs Professor Sonia Kreidenweis and Professor Jeffrey Collett from May 21 through June 6 at the USDA/Forest Service Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana. The primary goal of the FLAME project is to characterize particulate matter emissions from wildland fires relevant to visibility impairment and particulate matter air quality standards. A series of over 100 burns was conducted for a variety of wildland fuels, primarily from the western and southeastern U.S., and measurements were made to develop smoke emission composition profiles and key physical and optical properties of each smoke type. Project findings will support the needs of wildland fire managers and policy makers in determining the contributions of biomass burning to regional air quality degradation. FLAME is supported by the Joint Fire Science Program and is a cooperative effort between the National Park Service, the Forest Service's Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, the University of Nevada Desert Research Institute and the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, with participation from a number of outside investigators. More information is available here.

June 12, 2007
  • Dr. Thomas Birner will be joining the department faculty as an Assistant Professor in early 2008. Thomas will come to us from the University of Toronto, where he is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Munich in 2003. His current research pertains to the dynamics of the stratosphere and upper troposphere as well as the fine-scale structure of the extratropical tropopause.

May 3, 2007

  • The department presented two awards to graduate students at the annual Herbert Riehl and Alumni Reception. Amy Butler received the 2007 Herbert Riehl Memorial Award for "Observed Relationships between the Southern Annular Mode and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" (Advisor: Dave Thompson). Kirsten Koehler received the 2007 Department Alumni Award for Outstanding Research by a Senior Ph.D. Student for "Owens (dry) Lake: Potential impacts of PM10 emissions to cloud development" (Advisor: Sonia Kreidenweis). Congratulations to Amy and Kirsten on their research that led to these awards!

April 30, 2007
  • CloudSat, a satellite mission conceived by Colorado State University scientist Graeme Stephens, celebrated its first anniversary on Saturday as the world's most sensitive cloud-profiling radar in orbit. Please see the university press release for more information.

April 26, 2007

  • Professor Wayne Schubert won the Jack E. Cermak Outstanding Advisor Award endowed in 1984 to honor excellence in academic advising including recognition by students and peers as an outstanding advisor; capacity to offer career as well as academic advising; interpersonal communication skills that lead to beneficial advising relationships; and contributions to the improvement of advising services and/or the appreciation of academic advising throughout the campus.

April 20, 2007
  • Nolan Doesken, Colorado State Climatologist and director of CoCoRaHS, received the NOAA Environmental Hero Award at a ceremony held in Washington D.C. This award recognizes his leadership in developing CoCoRaHS, which began as a Colorado precipitation observation network and quickly grew into a national program. Appreciation also goes to others in the department who have made valuable contributions to developing the CoCoRaHS network, which has now become an important asset to the National Weather Service for weather forecasts and warnings. Please see the university press release for more information.

April 12, 2007

  • Professor David Randall won the CSU College of Engineering George T. Abell Outstanding Faculty Research Award for 2007 at the ceremony held on April 12 at the Fort Collins Hilton.

April 5, 2007
  • The Atmospheric Chemistry program secured 3 of 10 slots available in the U.S. for participation in the U.S/Nordic Biogenic Secondary Aerosol Workshop Series for young scientists who received their Ph.D. since 2001. Assistant professor Colette Heald, research scientist Markus Petters, and postdoctoral scientist Amy Sullivan were each selected for this honor. Their selection includes full support for participation in workshops in Finland in 2007 and Sweden in 2008. This is a terrific honor for these individuals and reflects well on the outstanding young scientists we are privileged to work with in the Atmospheric Chemistry program.

March 31, 2007

  • Dr. Greg Holland, Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesoscale & Microscale Meteorology (MMM) and 1983 Ph.D. graduate of the department, received the CSU College of Engineering Distinguished Alumnus Award for the Department of Atmospheric Science in a ceremony held at the Fort Collins Hilton.

February 6, 2007
  • The department has recently published an updated alumni newsletter. Download the PDF version here.

January 30, 2007

  • Florian Schwandner (Collett Group) will chair the WOVOdat 1st Technical Workshop of the World Organization of Volcano Observatories on site from February 7th through 9th.

January 25, 2007
  • Professor Colette Heald, who will be joining our faculty in January 2008, received the Paul Crutzen Prize for the best paper at the International Young Scientists' Conference held in Beijing, China in November 2006. You can read more about it here.

January 18, 2007

  • Several hundred alumni, prospective students, and friends attended the Department of Atmospheric Science annual reception on January 16 at the AMS Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. While an ice storm paralyzed San Antonio during the meeting, a gathering of friends warmed things up at this annual department event.

January 10, 2007
  • Dave Randall and Wayne Schubert of our Department, along with Chin-Hoh Moeng of NCAR, are organizing the Akio Arakawa Symposium to be held next Tuesday, January 16, at the AMS Annual Meeting at San Antonio, TX. Details of the program can be found here.

January 2, 2007

  • Takamitsu (Taka) Ito will be joining the Department of Atmospheric Science faculty on January 15, 2007. Taka is an expert on ocean dynamics, global climate, and biogeochemical cycles. He received his Ph.D. at MIT and comes to us most recently from the University of Washington where he served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at JISAO. In 2005 he received MIT's Rossby Award for the most outstanding Ph.D. thesis in the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate. Welcome, Taka, to the Department of Atmospheric Science here at CSU.

December 30, 2006
  • Professor Steven Rutledge will become an editor of the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences on January 1, 2007. He will handle papers in the general area of atmospheric physics for this journal.

November 20, 2006

  • Dr. Richard Johnson will replace Dr. Steve Rutledge as the new Department Head on January 1, 2007. Please read Dr. Johnson's incoming statement and Dr. Rutledge's outgoing statement for more information.

November 10, 2006
  • Join us for the Atmospheric Science Alumni Reception to take place in San Antonio, TX, on January 16 during the AMS National Meeting. See old friends, catch up with faculty members, and have a great time during an evening of fine food and drink from 5:30 to 8:30 at the Marriott Rivercenter in Salon M. We hope to see you there!

November 2, 2006

  • Professor Steven Rutledge was re-elected to the UCAR Board of Trustees for a second 3-year term during the October 2006 UCAR members meeting in Boulder, CO.
  • Becky Adams won the best student paper award at the Tenth Annual High Plains Conference held October 4-6 in Dodge City, Kansas.

July 17, 2006
  • The National Science Foundation (NSF) today awarded Colorado State University and its partners a $19 million Science and Technology Center to build climate models that will more accurately depict cloud processes and improve climate and weather forecasting for scientists around the world. The NSF Science and Technology Center for Multi-Scale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes will be based at Colorado State in the College of Engineering's renowned Department of Atmospheric Science. David Randall, professor of atmospheric science since 1988, will serve as principal investigator and director of the center.

July 11, 2006

  • Christopher Davey of the Desert Research Institute's Western Regional Climate Center was awarded the inaugural Ph.D. Dissertation Medal in Applied Climatology from the American Association of State Climatologists, or AASC, for his paper entitled "Differences between near-surface equivalent temperature and temperature trends for the Eastern United States." Christopher was recently a student in the CSU Atmospheric Science Ph.D. program.

June 23, 2006

  • Dave Randall has received the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. The NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal is the highest honor NASA awards to anyone who was not a government employee when the service was performed. The award is granted only to individuals whose distinguished accomplishments contributed substantially to the NASA mission. The contribution must be so extraordinary that other forms of recognition would be inadequate.
    David Randall receiving NDPS medal.

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