Environmental science was a fledgling discipline when the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) was established in 1967. Forty years later, environmental science issues and the researchers who study them are in the spotlight.
Last month, CIRES scientists shared in the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former Vice President Al Gore. One week later, the New York Times reported that Kansas regulators were the first in the country to deny a coal-fired power plant permit based on projected global warming emissions.
"Our science has an impact that extends beyond the people who research it," said Susan Buhr, director of CIRES' Education and Outreach Program. "A lot of what we do is directed at helping society understand the pressing environmental challenges that we face." CIRES' Education and Outreach program offers formal education programs for K-12 science teachers and is currently developing climate literacy guidelines for decision makers and the public.
The institute, which started with just four fellows, is now home to more than 580 scientists, university faculty and students at the CU-Boulder campus and at various Boulder-based NOAA labs and centers. CIRES is the oldest and largest of NOAA's cooperative institutes, with an annual research budget now exceeding $47 million.
"I think, to some degree, our rapid growth is a reflection of the degree to which the scientific and academic communities, as well as the general public, have begun to value environmental research," said CIRES director Konrad Steffen, an expert on climate change and the Greenland ice sheet.
Earlier this year, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Professor Steffen at his research camp in Greenland to learn firsthand about CIRES' study of the world's frozen regions. Former Vice President Al Gore also visited CIRES' National Snow and Ice Data Center this fall to discuss diminishing Arctic sea ice, which hit an all-time record low in September.
While climate research has been the science media topic du jour, it's just a small component of CIRES' overall program. Today, CIRES' researchers are leading efforts to improve understanding of how air pollutants are formed and transported regionally. The institute's expertise also extends to water quality, ecosystem disturbance and earthquake prediction.
"During the 40 years since its founding, CIRES has evolved along with the deeper understanding of environmental problems," said Carl Kisslinger, CIRES' first executive director. In fact, the institute originally focused on geophysical science, according to Kisslinger, who continues to keep office hours three mornings a week.
CIRES seismologists helped establish UNAVCO, a Boulder-based organization that supports the deployment of Global Positioning Systems, or GPS, to study very small movements of the Earth's surface. Today, GPS is a key tool in earthquake research in places as varied as the San Luis Valley of Colorado and the Himalaya.
While still in its formative years, CIRES expanded into atmospheric chemistry, a research area that later developed a biological component aimed at understanding gas emissions from living organisms. The institute played a lead role in developing "nuclear winter" theory and studying the stratospheric ozone hole during the 1980s.
Margaret Tolbert, CIRES fellow and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at CU-Boulder, is one of the youngest women elected to the National Academy of Sciences for her work to reveal the chemical conditions under which rapid depletion of stratospheric ozone might occur.
More recently, CIRES scientists have participated in popular regional air quality campaigns, such as the New England and Texas Air Quality Studies, which have largely shaped current thinking about regulating pollutants like ground-level ozone and particulate matter. CIRES' atmospheric research also focuses on how invisible, reactive gases can form particles that add to haze in both urban and rural settings.
"If we can understand how these particles form, we'll have a better understanding of how to limit haze pollution, and we may also learn how these particles possibly affect the climate by scattering and absorbing radiation and changing precipitation patterns," said Jose-Luis Jimenez, CIRES fellow and assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
"We have an incredible pool of talent in environmental chemistry, ecosystem sciences, weather and climate dynamics, cryospheric and polar processes, solid earth sciences, and observations, modeling and forecasting, working at the interface of earth system science collaboratively with our colleagues on the CU campus and the affiliated NOAA and national laboratories in the Boulder region," said Steffen.
CIRES also is strongly committed to communicating the relevance of its work to the public and to decision makers, according to Steffen. CIRES' Center for Science and Technology Policy Research conducts research, education and outreach to improve the relationship between societal needs and science and technology policy.
The institute's Western Water Assessment also provides climate information to water resource managers in the western United States.
In celebration of its 40 years, CIRES is hosting the award-winning photographic exhibit of Rosemarie and Pat Keough: Antarctic - Passion and Obsession. The exhibit is free and open to the public from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31 in the Norlin Library HotSpot Gallery. The exhibit will be open during normal library business hours.