Our department was well-represented in recent elections of the National Weather Association (NWA). ATS M.S. graduate Becca Mazur was chosen as President-elect/Board Director. She will begin a term on January 1, 2024, and assume the role of President in 2025. Becca received her M.S. degree from the department in 2007 under the guidance of Professor Tom Vonder Haar. Becca’s thesis was entitled “Observations of inflow feeder clouds and their relation…

Justin Hudson, Ph.D. candidate advised by Steve Miller, received a scholarship award from the Graduate Student Council at the 2023 Graduate Student Showcase. The showcase was held on November 15. The Graduate Student Council, one of many sponsors of the showcase, selected five graduate students to receive their scholarship. Hudson was selected for his project focused on milky seas, a rare form of large-scale bioluminescence where the ocean can glow…

We are excited to announce that Prof. Maria Rugenstein has been awarded the 2024 Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award by the Climate:  Past, Present & Future Division of the European Geosciences Union.  This award recognizes Maria for her important contributions to the Earth sciences in the area of climate.  Maria has contributed fundamental and widely recognized research on understanding climate sensitivity and feedbacks, including the role of SST pattern changes…

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded Russel Perkins, a research scientist in CSU's Department of Atmospheric Science, funding to advance our understanding and modeling of the role that a class of atmospheric aerosols known as ice-nucleating particles play in cloud formation. Perkins and co-investigator Sonia Kreidenweis, a University Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, will investigate how different aerosols affect cloud properties like ice/water ratio, average droplet size, and other…

Graduate student Alex DesRosiers was honored on November 3 as the first recipient of the William M. Gray Award, a newly established honor that recognizes outstanding published research into fundamental tropical meteorology and climate. Alex received the award at a special department event and presented his recognized research. He is a Ph.D. candidate advised by Michael Bell entering the final year of his research, which involves the vertical structure of…

We Are Water, an NSF-funded project focused on water issues in the Four Corners Region, received an 2023 Governor’s Award for High-Impact Research earlier in October. The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (known as CoCoRaHS) is a partner on the project. Water is an incredibly important, complicated topic in the Four Corners Region. We Are Water was started with the hope of providing community members with a place…