Some of the nation’s leading climate scientists Monday sounded an alarm about the urgency of addressing climate change over the next decade, as a key index used to measure humans’ impact on the warming planet ticked higher. “Unfortunately,” said Ko Barrett, a senior climate advisor to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a vice […]
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Posted inNews, Wildfire
There was no red flag warning the day of the Marshall fire. Forecasters are now rethinking their standards.
The National Weather Service in Boulder is reviewing how it warns the public about high fire danger after embers carried by 100 mph wind gusts exploded into the most destructive inferno in Colorado history. The office said it plans to review the standards it uses to declare red flag warnings, and whether to reduce the […]
Posted inNews
From sky to bedrock, researchers near Crested Butte are resetting what we know about water in the West
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 […]
Posted inBusiness, Climate, Energy, Environment, News, Politics and Government
A new rule to slash oil and gas emissions appeals to the industry, but Colorado activists worry it won’t work
The Polis administration is banking on an untested, first-in-the-nation type of regulation to sharply cut oil and gas sector emissions to meet state greenhouse gas targets — drawing praise from the industry, but roiling environmental groups and some local officials. The draft “greenhouse gas intensity target” rule, to be submitted to the Air Quality Control […]
Posted inClimate, Environment, News
Colorado’s bad air includes fumes from sunscreen, bug spray and hand lotion
When Matt Coggon and his team of federal air researchers drive their white utility vans past beaches like Boulder Reservoir on a scorching hot day, their instrument panels instantly detect a cloud of volatile chemicals ascending into the blue Colorado sky. It’s the sunscreen. New papers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that […]
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 inClimate, Environment, News
Study: Drought-breaking rains more rare, erratic in Colorado and the West
By Matthew Brown, The Associated Press BILLINGS, Montana — Rainstorms grew more erratic and droughts much longer across most of the U.S. West over the past half-century as climate change warmed the planet, according to a sweeping government study released Tuesday that concludes the situation is worsening. The most dramatic changes were recorded in the […]
Posted inClimate, Environment, News
Colorado’s major snowstorm only made a dent in the drought. These maps and graphs explain what’s going on.
Despite what multiple feet of snow on the ground might suggest to many Coloradans, the state’s long-term drought remains persistent. And water forecasters are worried that even if the state receives decent spring moisture, Colorado and the greater American Southwest will need lots more to emerge from this drought. The record-breaking storms that buried Front […]
Posted inClimate, Environment, Growth, News, Outdoors, Wildfire
Climate change ravaged Colorado and the West with heat and drought in 2020. This year may be worse.
If there were any doubts that the climate is changing in the Colorado River Basin, 2020 went a long way toward dispelling them. Unprecedented wildfires, deadly heat waves, withering drought — the many indicators of the climate mayhem that scientists have been warning about for years — ravaged the landscape, claiming dozens of lives and […]
Posted inClimate, Environment, News
Colorado’s statewide drought “pretty dire.” It’ll take more than a season’s snowfall to get out of it.
It may be a new year, but Colorado’s statewide drought will be baggage it carries well into 2021. More than a quarter of the state is in the worst level of drought, and with snowpack significantly below what’s expected this time of year — especially on the Western Slope — scientists are warning that it […]