CRESTED BUTTE – Eight white shipping containers, instruments spouting from the tops of some and a generator humming away in another, sit in the East River valley, on the outskirts of this mountain town, pulling data out of the air. The containers, a “mobile atmospheric observatory,” will gather bits of information over the next two […]
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Posted inClimate, Environment, Health, News, Wildfire
Smoke from faraway wildfires may be worse for Coloradans than if it came from blazes in their own backyards
For long stretches of the summer the Front Range has been bathed in smoke traveling hundreds of miles from California and Oregon wildfires and it turns out that long-range smoke could be more dangerous than the fumes from homegrown forest fires. Some initial studies have shown that long-range smoke may be more toxic and since […]
Posted inClimate, Environment, News
Here’s what you need to know about Colorado air pollution — and what you can do about it
The state has issued an ozone health warning for Coloradans every day since July 5. We’ve already accumulated 37 state Ozone Action Alert Days for 2021 by the last week of July, with plenty of scorching August and September weeks left to go, after tallying 43 all of last year. State officials are all but […]
Posted inClimate, Environment, Health, News
Some of the worst ozone pollution in the U.S. settles along the Front Range. New rules to fix it are ahead.
When it comes to oxygen, the Front Range sometimes has too much of a good thing. On many sunny, summer days the region has not only O2 in the air but also O3 – oxygen with an extra atom that transforms it into a corrosive gas — ozone. “The extra atom of oxygen turns it […]
Posted inBusiness, Climate, Energy, Environment, News
Colorado drivers could use a “coach” to get them to buy more EVs
One seldom-explained job of an electric-vehicle coach is to assure people they’re not seeing ghosts. Julia Moravcsik likes to take the EV-curious to the parking lot at National Center for Atmospheric Research, on Table Mesa above Boulder, and demonstrate her car’s “Smart summon” mode. With an all-electric Tesla, the driver can stand at the curb […]
Posted inEnvironment, News, Outdoors, Water, Wildfire
Blazes in Colorado, California may be part of a climate-driven transformation of wildfires around the globe
The wildfires that exploded over the past few days in California and Colorado show clear influences of global warming, climate scientists say, and evidence of how a warming and drying climate is increasing the size and severity of fires from the California coast to the high Rocky Mountains. They may also be the latest examples […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Energy, Environment, Health, News, Politics and Government, Transportation, Wildfire
Air quality improved slightly during the stay-at-home order. But Colorado still has a serious pollution problem.
Metro Denver ranks 10th among most ozone-polluted cities in the country, according to the American Lung Association. Fort Collins is ranked No. 19. Colorado has been making progress to clean up its air over the past decade by enacting stricter oil and gas regulations and automobile emissions standards, but the Front Range is still out […]
Posted inBusiness, Education, News, Politics and Government, Technology
Little-known internet network plans Western Colorado expansion to link students, nonprofits to supercomputers
The text-heavy website looks like it’s stuck in the 1990s. But peering past the Front Range GigaPop’s pages full of Times New Roman font and blue underlined links, you’ll understand what the fuss is about. The broadband network, long exclusive to universities and federal research labs, offers unthinkably fast speeds and access to the brightest […]
Posted inEnvironment, News, Outdoors, Technology
We know the earth is warming. We know that will stress water in the West. But we don’t know how.
Flavio Lehner was a graduate student working with computer models simulating Earth’s climate at the University of Berne in Switzerland when he had a chance to join a research vessel collecting sea temperatures and measuring ocean currents between Greenland and Svalbard, Norway. “As a lifestyle, field work is very agreeable,” Lehner said. “But for me, […]
Posted inEnvironment
How will Western water be affected by climate change? A tiny Colorado flower may have the answer
The question biologist Heidi Steltzer is trying to answer is this: How much water does the tiny prairie smoke – a diaphanous pink mountain flower – send into the sky? The answer could say a lot about how much water cities from Denver to Los Angeles will have as a changing climate tampers with the […]