CSU Department of Atmospheric Science

08/20/2026

Lauren Zitlow was a Colorado Climate Center research intern this summer. The Colorado Climate Center, located within the CSU Department of Atmospheric Science, provides services and expertise related to Colorado's complex climate.

08/15/2026

Incoming graduate student Cody Converse has participated in multiple storm chase missions with the Doppler on Wheels (DOW) trucks through the Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets (FARM) facility. Converse also marched 4 years of indoor competitive drumline with Winter Guard International and one season of drum corps with Drum Corps International. Converse will be conducting research with Associate Professor Rasmussen and Professor Schumacher and has an Associate of Science from Grand Rapids Community College, a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology from Central Michigan University, and a Master of Science in Geography from Northern Illinois University.

08/12/2026

Millions of airline passengers could experience fewer jarring flights thanks to a new federal forecasting tool.

08/12/2026

Flash floods are one of several extreme weather-related phenomena that Colorado faces. And at the end of July, we reflected on the 50th anniversary of one of the deadliest, most devastating floods in our state’s history: the Big Thompson Flood of July 31, 1976.

It was a Saturday, the eve of Colorado’s 100th anniversary of statehood. Hundreds of people, including many from out of state, were spending the holiday weekend recreating in the Big Thompson Canyon: a winding topographic feature that provides a scenic thoroughfare between Loveland and Estes Park.

The weather was reported to have been partly cloudy that afternoon, but conditions began to shift in the early evening. Around 5:30 p.m. local time, a large group of nearly stationary thunderstorms began forming just east of Estes Park. The storms grew quickly and ultimately produced roughly a foot of rainfall in the span of the next several hours: about five times the amount of precipitation that the area typically receives in an entire July.

The devastation was tremendous: Hundreds of homes and businesses were destroyed, sections of Highway 34 were washed away and, tragically, 144 people lost their lives. There has not been a deadlier flash flood in the U.S. since that event, and it remains one of the deadliest weather disasters in Colorado’s history.

Read more from Allie Mazurek, engagement climatologist and researcher at the Colorado Climate Center at https://engr.source.colostate.edu/50-years-later-what-caused-the-big-thompson-flood/

08/07/2026

Our graduate student James Larson just published in Environmental Research Letters as first author, titled "Climate variability introduces uncertainty into future emissions pathways." The researchers examined how natural temperature variability influences societal decision-making, in turn, shaping global emissions trajectories. Short-term drops in temperature can dramatically reduce how quickly people work to reach net zero emissions.

Read the paper at https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ae8f5a

📈: Cooling due to volcanoes causes sharp opinion drops and long-lived emissions delays

08/05/2026

Associate Professor Kristen Rasmussen presented at the Colorado Climate Center's symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Big Thompson Flood held in Estes Park, Colorado. Her research on a flood in Leh, India illuminated similarities with both the 1976 Big Thompson Flood in Colorado and the 1972 Black Hills Flood in South Dakota. By considering "ingredients" that lead to devastating flash floods, researchers can identify where and when similar events may occur.

08/04/2026

Professor Patricia Rettig with the Water Resources Archive at Colorado State University Libraries presented at the Colorado Climate Center's symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Big Thompson Flood held in Estes Park, Colorado.

08/03/2026

Professor and Colorado State Climatologist Russ Schumacher presented at the Colorado Climate Center's symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Big Thompson Flood held in Estes Park, Colorado.

08/01/2026

07/29/2026

According to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the U.S.’s most influential science advisory institutions, the relatively young field of extreme event attribution science has advanced significantly over the last decade. Scientists can more confidently determine how much human-caused climate change influenced an individual extreme weather or climate event, such as a specific heatwave, flood, or hurricane.

Extreme event attribution researchers do not ask whether climate change caused a specific event. Rather, the question according to Professor Jim Hurrell is, “how would this event have differed in a world without enhanced atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases?”

Hurrell is the Scott Presidential Chair of Environmental Science and Engineering at Colorado State University, and chair of the National Academies committee that conducted the study on the state of extreme event attribution science. Hurrell said the science connects, “global climate change with local experiences.”

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, or NASEM, brings together thousands of experts such as Hurrell to volunteer their time to priority projects. The committee Hurrell led consisted of fourteen experts based out of twelve universities, the National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Sandia National Laboratories.

Hurrell said his experience leading the multi-year NASEM project reflected their stated purpose. According to their website, NASEM provides independent, trustworthy advice and facilitates solutions to complex challenges by mobilizing expertise, practice, and knowledge.

From in-depth studies to collaborative workshops, the work of NASEM is based on scientific evidence and conducted in a non-partisanship manner. “We had a really dedicated committee with broad expertise,” Hurrell said. “We had a statement of task. We had a big job to do, and that’s what we focused on.”

The National Academies committee wrote a piece for The Conversation about their work: https://theconversation.com/how-do-scientists-know-if-climate-change-made-a-heat-wave-extreme-storm-or-wildfire-worse-288232