1. 1 Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere CIRA Colorado State University An Overview Prepared by: Mary McInnis-Efaw Department Manager, CIRA October 2005 www.cira.colostate.edu

2. 2 CIRA’s Background Established in 1980 via MOU between National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Colorado State University as a Federal Joint Institute Co-sponsored by the National Environmental Satellite and Data Information Service (NOAA/NESDIS) and Office of Atmospheric Research (OAR) line elements of NOAA Active involvement with other line elements (National Weather Service, Planning Programming & Integration and Office of Global Programs) Strong multi-disciplinary emphasis (Departments of Atmospheric Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Civil Engineering (Hydrology), Economics, Statistics, Sociology, Forest Sciences, Ecology …..)

3. 3 CIRA Description Coop. Institute with NOAA –NESDIS –OAR/OGP –NWS Non-degree granting unit in Engineering Multi-disciplinary focus Coop. Institute with National Park Service –Air Quality Division Center for Geosciences - DOD funded center of excellence Satellite and remote sensing center of excellence

4. 4 NOAA CI Research Themes Global and Regional Climate Studies Local Area and Mesoscale Weather Forecasting and Evaluation Modeling and Data Assimilation Applications of Satellite Observations Air Quality and Visibility Education, Training, and Outreach Societal and Economic Impacts Cloud Physics

5. 5 CIRA Organizational Structure

6. 6 CIRA Atmospheric Science Department CIRA at Colorado State University – Foothills Campus

7. 7 CIRA Today Operates under a Cooperative Agreement (CA) with NOAA Complementary CA’s with DOI/National Park Service and DoD/Army Research Lab. 130 scientists, staff and students Including 6 Federal NESDIS scientists Including 4 postdocs, 5 graduate students, 16 undergraduates Including 15 academic faculty (part-time) $13M/year in research and outreach funding $9M/year from NOAA $3M/year from NESDIS (including NESDIS/NWS)

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11. 11 CIRA/NESDIS Collaborations in Mentoring and Technical Transfer -CIRA and the NOAA/NESDIS Office of Research and Applications (ORA) have established a Working Agreement for as many as 10-15 research scientists to be appointed through CIRA as Postdoctoral Fellows with most positions being located at OAR in Camp Springs, Maryland. The appointments are supported by NOAA/NESDIS via (A) ORA central funding or (B) ORA science projects. -Professional interactions are fostered among the CIRA/ORA postdocs and resident scientists in both groups by scientific collaborations, working visits, workshops and seminars, sharing of facilities, software and data sets and by other means.

12. 12 Satellite Observation Resources at CSU/CIRA Real-time, High Resolution Low-Cost Satellite Earthstation –GOES ingest, cal/nav, and archival –Meteosat, FY-2, GMS, NOAA archival –Conventional weather data 20 Terrabytes online hard drive space 50 Tbytes of historical satellite data 250 Windows and Linux computers configured for multi-tasking environment (DPEAS) and image processing CloudSat Mission Science Data Processing Center

13. 13 CIRA Earthstation – “A global observatory” Satellite Ingest and Infrastructure These three images are the first full disk images from GOES-8, GOES- 9, and GOES-10 as captured at CIRA. CIRA archives all GOES, GMS, Meteosat, and AVHRR satellite at full data and JPG formats.

14. 14 Community Outreach Activities GLOBE Program: Worldwide K-12 network National Emergency Management Training National Weather Service Warning Coord training for Meteorologists/Hydrologists COMET Hydro/Met training VISIT program: Forecaster Training from an Online Virtual Lab Provide support for CoCoRaHS: Colorado Collaborative Rain and Hail Study

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16. 16 Launch Sept ‘05 Funding from CSA and NASA First multi-satellite “train” First cloud radar CIRA is the CloudSat Science Data Processing Center