“We are seeing very unusual climate behavior and weather behavior that we don’t typically see this time of year,” said Becky Bolinger, Assistant State Climatologist with the Colorado Climate Center at CSU. (9News)
Never before in my lifetime has the entire tundra-to-prairie burned like this. Compare the sizes of the recent fire scars to the ones on this map from earlier years. (Yale Climate Connections)
According to the Colorado Climate Center, from 1992 to 2015 it was unheard of for large wildfires of more than 11,000 acres to ignite in the Rocky Mountain state so late in the year. (Washington Post)
Colorado has had three consecutive summers “with really no monsoon,” Schumacher said, and the last three monsoon seasons have been the worst three on record for western Colorado. (Colorado Public Radio)
Steamboat has reason to be “optimistic,” according to Russ Schumacher, the Colorado state climatologist and director of the Colorado Climate Center. (Denver Post)
Among the nine hurricanes of 2020, four – including the two most powerful storms Laura and Teddy – can be traced back to Africa, where the seeds for their destructive power were first laid. (BBC)
As of the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor update issued Thursday, more than 99% of Colorado was in some level of drought, and most of the Western Slope was in at least extreme drought. (Daily Sentinel)
Becky Bollinger, a research associate with the Colorado Climate Center, said 2020’s water year was the third-driest on record, behind only the infamous drought years of 2002 and 2018. (Durango Herald)
CSU atmospheric scientist Zack Labe explains how the rate of ice loss in the Arctic is unprecedented. (ABC News)
The American Geophysical Union has awarded Atmospheric Science Associate Professor Libby Barnes the Future Horizons in Climate Science: Turco Lectureship. Barnes will present the lecture during the AGU Fall Meeting in December.