CIRA is part of the Walter Scott Jr. College of Engineering at Colorado State University and is located on the Foothills Campus. Primarily a research facility, with relatively few faculty and students directly working at CIRA, education and outreach permeate everything that CIRA does, through active relationships with other academic units on campus and with the public at large.

Founded in 1980, CIRA is a NOAA Cooperative Institute with its most recent recompete for that designation awarded in 2019. Currently there are ~ 150 researchers and staff employed by CIRA across the United States in Fort Collins, Boulder, College Park, MD, Silver Spring, MD, Miami, FL and Kansas City, MO. Additionally, there are 18 PIs with CIRA based projects in other units across campus. CIRA recently welcomed Steve Miller as the newest Director of CIRA in January 2022. Steve previously served as CIRA’s Deputy Director and contributes greatly to the breadth and depth of research that ensures the prominent role of CSU at the leading edge of NOAA research. As Director, Steve additionally assumes a role as Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science.

Research at CIRA focuses on five main research themes: Satellite Algorithm Development, Training and Education; Regional to Global Scale Modeling Systems; Data Assimilation; Climate-Weather Processes; and Data Distribution. Additionally, CIRA conducts efforts across three cross-cutting themes: Societal and Economic Impacts, Data Analytics, and Education and Outreach. Each project funded through the NOAA Cooperative Institute falls under one of these themes. In addition to research support from NOAA, CIRA researchers also are funded from many other sources, including NASA, the Department of Defense, the National Park Service, and the National Science Foundation.

CIRA tropical storm research and satellite imagery has been frequently highlighted by NOAA, including a recent look at the end of the 2021 tropical storm season. When measured by total energy (defined as the combined wind strength and longevity of all the storms in the season) this years’ tropical storm season ranked as one of the most powerful seasons on record. Curiously, despite the record energy of the season, it also ended rather abruptly, with few storms occurring in the last month of the season, and with fewer storms in total throughout the season than many previous seasons. As one of the premier tropical storm research institutes nationally, CIRA tropical storm research provides several significant guidance products to the National Hurricane Center, including modeling expertise, track and intensity forecasts, and comprehensive satellite imagery, which helps forecasters better understand the nature of tropical storms. NOAA’s summary of the season, which includes a significant contribution from CIRA’s satellite imagery, can be found online here.

Unit Research Administrators for CIRA are Chris Ford, Kristen Parks, and Erin Carleton. 

We hope you are enjoying learning about different units at CSU and the incredible work being accomplished across campus. Let us know if OSP can spotlight your unit by emailing [email protected].