Our Research
Climate and Weather Processes
Global and regional climate sensitivity is defined primarily by feedbacks to the planets’ hydrological cycle that in turn alter the planet’s energy balance. These feedbacks involve processes that are ‘fast’ such as cloud and precipitation processes, evolving within the ‘weather envelope’, or slow such as changes related to land cover, carbon exchanges or ice sheet… Read more »
Data Assimilation
The future state of a dynamical system is typically calculated by integrating a numerical model, and depends on parameters such as initial conditions, model errors, empirical parameters of the model, and possibly on lateral boundary conditions. Observations add new information that can be combined with model prediction to produce optimal values of dynamical system parameters… Read more »
Modeling Systems Research
Much of the Regional to Global-scale Modeling work done at CIRA is performed by approximately 20 CIRA researchers who are integrated into various collaborative research activities within the Global Systems Division (GSD) at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) in Boulder. They conduct research and development to provide NOAA and the nation with observing,… Read more »
Education and Outreach
Education and Outreach at CIRA is designed to support the research performed at CIRA, improve the visibility of CIRA research and researchers to the University, within NOAA, and to the community, and to inspire the next generation of research scientists. To support these goals, programs administered by the Education and Outreach (E&O) program are organized… Read more »
Societal and Economic Impact Studies
At CIRA, we recognize the importance of developing meaningful interdisciplinary partnerships to help us apply our research in ways that directly benefit society. As such, the Societal Impacts of Weather and Climate (SIWC) research group was established to address NOAA’s social science research priorities. Through our partnership with CSU, we’ve been able to collaborate with… Read more »
Satellite Algorithm Development, Training and Education
Satellite information improves our ability to observe current environmental conditions (relevant, e.g., to increase warning lead times) and advance the representation of physics in numerical weather and climate prediction models. NOAA geostationary and polar orbiting satellites are an integral part of the international global space-based observing system, providing a ‘global spectral shell’ of information with… Read more »
Data Distribution
The Data Distribution theme area involves research focusing on identifying effective and efficient methods of quickly distributing and displaying very large sets of environmental and model data using data networks, using web map services, data compression algorithms, and other techniques. CIRA is engaged in a number of notable activities under this thematic research area at… Read more »