Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: February 5th, 2026

NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs, Ph.D., spoke to what NOAA may look like in five years, saying there would be more use of autonomous vehicles, such as drones. CSU researchers shared a few details about weather drones. 

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: September 26th, 2025

On Sept. 12, 1980, the president of Colorado State University signed the cooperative agreement with NOAA that resulted in the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). Now, 45 years later, CIRA is recognized as an authority in weather satellite data.

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: September 16th, 2025

The Meteorological Society of Japan honors Colorado State University Postdoctoral Fellow Taiga Tsukada with the Yamamoto Award. Tsukada receives the award in recognition for his work developing a novel wind estimation method using high-frequency observations from meteorological satellites.  

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: September 3rd, 2025

After 30 years at CIRA, Senior Research Associate Bernie Connell celebrates her retirement this month. Connell supported forecasters, managers and decision makers with trainings on satellite products in the national and international communities during her time at Colorado State University.

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: August 13th, 2025

CIRA researcher Kate Musgrave specializes in AI hurricane forecasting. With family in the Southeastern United States, the challenge of hurricane forecasting is extremely important to her. She speaks to recent research advances and shares stories from the past worth learning from.

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: July 30th, 2025

Tom Kent has been with NOAA 40 years and CIRA for 29 of those. Most of his career was spent on data management and decoding software for real-time operations in the National Weather Service field. Congrats on retirement, Tom!

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: July 22nd, 2025

When it comes to long-term datasets, NASA is a leader in multidecadal records. CSU’s CIRA has a team led by John Forsythe working with NASA on the next big water vapor dataset based on satellite information.

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: July 16th, 2025

An expert team at CIRA will manage, process and distribute the daily terabytes of data the NASA INCUS, or Investigation of Convective Updrafts, satellite mission will collect. CIRA began developing the data processing center for INCUS in 2021. 

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: July 15th, 2025

CIRA researcher Stan Rhodes is part of a team that has spent the last two years working to understand flood fatalities nationwide. Rhodes recommends starting with the result, such as an injury or fatality, and working backwards from there to determine what events and decisions brought the individual to that outcome.

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: July 11th, 2025

The research has progressed through the NASA standard Technology Readiness Levels, which means that the model is moving from a research project towards a product suite that could be used by public forecasters. These Readiness levels indicate NASA’s assessment of the maturity of technologies from concept to successful operations so that new innovations can one day be used more widely.

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: June 16th, 2025

The CIRA Research and Service Initiative nominated awards are competitive, reviewed by a standing committee. Naufal Razin and Barbra Lashbrook received the awards in the categories of Research Initiative and Service Initiative, respectively.

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: June 6th, 2025

Why do about 88 people die from inland flooding every year in the United States? How are they dying? CIRA researcher Shelby Weder led an effort to delve into flood fatalities. The team said that findings tend to surprise people – the main cause of death is not what most people would guess.

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: June 2nd, 2025

The Atlantic Ocean was unusually quiet during the typical peak hurricane season last year. It looked like Colorado State University’s 2024 hurricane season forecast had overestimated with their highest prediction yet. Then, the season turned around with the most late-season activity ever recorded. 

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: May 16th, 2025

CIRA researcher Ryan Lagerquist is working on making weather predictions that provide multiple potential outcomes and their likelihoods – or uncertainty – using machine learning. A typical weather forecast, in contrast, only provides one answer, such as that tomorrow’s high temperature will be 84 degrees.

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: May 9th, 2025

About a dozen CIRA researchers and staff sit in the Aviation Weather Center in Kansas City, Missouri. Pilots, traffic flow managers and passengers benefit from a slew of the center’s resources. CIRA personnel based at the center share their passion for keeping skies safe.

Author: Dr. Matthew A. Rogers Posted: May 1st, 2025

You’ve probably seen him wearing camo on Fridays.  He’s the man of many nicknames: ‘Hurl’, ‘Finner’, ‘Cheevers’.  Some even call him ‘Ravenfeeder’ (but you have to ask him about that one.)  Officemates compared him to the ‘Terry Tate: Office Linebacker’ character.  He’s been maintaining CIRA’s computer systems since October 2009 – before that, he had a long and varied career in private industry, working with forecast models (remember RAMS?), email archival systems, and more.  He’s a private pilot, an avid outdoorsman, an advocate for club soccer, noon-hour weightlifting, and the vaunted ATS softball teams, one heck of a band roadie and occasional vocalist…and this Friday, May 2nd, will be his last day at CIRA. Steve Finley came to Fort Collins in December of 1990 by way of Iowa State University, where he earned his M.S. in Agricultural Meteorology.  His career in Colorado started in the Department of Atmospheric Science as the departmental computing, network, and weather lab administrator.  Stints with then-new faculty, including now-University Distinguished Professor Sonia Kreidenweis and recent ATS Department Head Jeff Collett were included.   Finley even honed his teaching chops TAing the weather lab course in ATS (continuing his teaching experience from ISU.)  University Distinguished Professor Sue van den Heever and CIRA researcher Lixin Lu were some of his students as he recalls.  But it was his partnership with ATS researcher Bill Thorson that would help shape much of his career to come. Leaving ATS in 1997, Finley worked for an aviation software company in Boulder, an FAA contractor.  Reuniting with Thorson at Mission Research Corporation, Finley ran a version of the RAMS model for DoD missions, requiring security clearances and frequent DC travel.  Mission Research Corporation was folded into defense contractor ATK in the meantime; in 2005, Finley again left to work with Thorson at Privacy Networks.  Stints with consulting and other work eventually led Finley back to CSU, completing the career-go-round in 2009 when he started working with CIRA. Finley’s long career at CSU has seen him rubbing elbows with many CSU and CIRA notables; on a soccer team run by CIRA researcher Ian Baker, Finley played with former CIRA director Graeme Stephens as a teammate, along with CIRA researcher Phil Partain, current CIRA director Steve Miller, and NOAA scientist John Knaff.  Besides van den Heever, Lu, Knaff, Baker, Miller, and Partain, Finley remembers the student careers of Professor and State Climatologist Russ Schumacher, ATS graduate and current Max Planck director Bjorn Stevens, CIRA IT head Natalie Tourville (and of course, yours truly, along with many others.) Regarding his experience working with students and researchers, Finley notes “the best undergraduates are the ones who ask questions.  The best graduate students are the ones who learn the tools and methods to answer questions.  And the best PhDs are the ones who constantly question the answers – especially their own.”  And whether it’s his solid presence keeping CIRA running, his friendly smile on ‘Camo Friday’, or his many contributions to research at ATS and CIRA, his presence… Read more »

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: April 29th, 2025

CIRA has been heavily involved with developing new tools for characterization of fire. What’s important for us is learning from the past, applying science and research toward new tools that can help avoid repeating history in the future.

Author: Theresa Barosh Posted: April 24th, 2025

This year, a program called Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments, also known as IMPROVE, celebrates 40 years of monitoring to protect visibility in the country’s most pristine locations.