CSU President William Morgan visited Herbert Riehl at the University of Chicago to discuss the idea of developing a sub-program in atmospheric science within the Civil Engineering Department

Herbert Riehl

Herbert Riehl arrives in Fort Collins to start program in atmospheric science
For more information on Dr. Herber Riehl's contributions to the field of atmospheric science click here to read a BAMS paper titled:
Herber Riehl: Intrepid and Enigmatic Scholar by Lew et al (2012)

Initial faculty recruited: (including Herbert Riehl) Elmar Reiter, Ferdinand Baer, William Marlatt, Lewis Grant, Bill Gray

The department's first graduate student, James. L Rasmussen, talks with US Senator Peter Dominick on the occasion of the dedication of the Foothills Campus Building.

Department formally established

Ph.D. program started

In 1966 CSU officially asked the Department to manage and develop the research facilities at Christman Field, just north across Laporte Avenue from the Department. (The field was Fort Collins first airport and a small exhibit with historical details is in the Fort Collins Museum). CSU had been given the field and its older hanger buildings years earlier and the Department needed facilities for instrument research in several areas as well as a place to host airborne research planes. At the time the airport also was used by an active CSU Ram Flying Club. A relatively newer facility on the site was the Department’s Atmospheric Simulation Lab being used for nucleation, dispersion and cloud chamber research. Professors Steve Cox, Tom Vonder Haar Peter Sinclair and colleagues remodeled one of the old hangers as an instrument machine shop supervised by Mr. Charles Wilkins, Senior Instrument Fabricator. Cox lead a team of scientists and engineers involved with surface, balloon-borne and aircraft measurements of solar and infrared radiation. From their base at Christman Field they participated and were co-leaders in numerous national and international field programs. Sinclair and colleagues were involved in numerous airborne research projects on severe storms and turbulence. From Christman Field, Sinclair’s Cessna 207 carried a package of instruments for airborne research, including studies of thunderstorm “outflow boundaries” by Dr. Jim Purdom (CSU, 1986) and Sinclair. Professor Vonder Haar, Cotton and others were active with the Flying Club. Many students departed Christman with Vonder Haar in his Cessna 201 Turbo for trips to research field sites (White Sands, NM; Miles City, MT; etc.) and to science meetings in Omaha, Salt Lake City, etc. A large number of students worked with instrumentation at Christman and it was used for class launches of rawinsondes and other “hands on” instrument learning.

New Atmospheric Science Building established at Foothills Campus on top of the hill

Establishment of the Colorado Climate Center with Tom McKee as the first Colorado State Climatologist

Establishment of the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere

In 1982, on the occasion of the Department’s 20th Anniversary celebration, a number of leaders in Atmospheric Science in the US provided unsolicited statements and remarks congratulating the Department of Atmospheric Science for ranking among the top three in the US. They were Dr. Earl Droessler, Chief Scientist of NOAA; Dr. Eugene Bierly, Director of the NSF Atmospheric Science Division; Professor Verner Suomi from Wisconsin (an AMS Rossby Award winner); Dr. Richard Hallgren, Director of NOAA’s National Weather Service; and others. (Droessler, Bierly and Suomi all served as Presidents of the AMS and Hallgren later became its Executive Secretary. Dr. Droessler had earlier been one of the NOAA co-founders of CIRA with Professor Vonder Haar and the faculty of 1979-80). In addition, at the 20th Anniversary Dinner, Professor Peter Hobbs of the University of Washington presented Vonder Haar and the faculty with a surprise gift. It was a red and white t-shirt styled after a popular AVIS rental car commercial of the time. It was labeled in bold letters “Number 2”. This ascribed 2nd position to our Department, following, of course, the No. 1 ranked Atmospheric Science Department at Washington, widely recognized as one of the most outstanding in our field.

On October 4, 1984, the Space Shuttle Challenger was launched at dawn from Cape Kennedy carrying the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS). The ERBS principal instrument (ERBI) and 2 identical ones launched later on the NOAA-9 and NOAA-10 satellites were developed over an 8-year period by a national team of CSU/NASA/NOAA/Ball Aerospace/TRW scientists and engineers. Professor Tom Vonder Haar of the Department was the Lead Scientist along with Dr. Robert Curran and Mr. Ed Harrison of NASA, Dr. Herb Jacobowitz of NOAA and Dr. Ed Vande Noord of Ball. Ball Aerospace of Colorado built the satellite and it was launched from the Shuttle by Ms. Sally Ride, Mission Specialist, using the robotic arm. The entire Earth Radiation Budge Experiment (ERBE) was very successful with data used for climate research by thousands of scientist around the world. Instruments on ERBS collected data for more than 20 years.

Development of Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS)

CHILL NSF National Radar Facility moved to CSU (Greeley)

Expansion of Atmospheric Chemistry program with arrival of Sonia Kreidenweis and Jeff Collett

Atmospheric Science-CIRA Research Center (ACRC) Building dedicated

Atmospheric Chemistry Building dedicated

Center for Multi-scale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes (CMMAP) founded

CloudSat launched (Graeme Stephens, Director)

ATS-West dedicated

After 15 years of effort, the National Research Council has came out with rankings of Atmospheric Science, Meteorology, and Oceanography departments. There are many categories in the NRC data, but CSU's Department of Atmospheric Science came out number one in a number of categories. This ranked CSU as one of the top two colleges in the country.

Lewis Grant was a member of our faculty from 1959 to 1993 when he retired to Emeritus status

Herbert Riehl was a member of our faculty from 1960 to 1972 when he retired

Ferdinand Baer was a member of our faculty from 1961 to 1972

Bill Gray was a member of our faculty from 1961 to 2004 when and retired to Emeritus status

Elmar Reiter was a member of our faculty from 1961 to 1988 when he retired to Emeritus status

Bill Marlatt was a member of our faculty from 1962 to 1970

Peter Sinclair was a member of our faculty from 1965 to 1992 when he retired to Emeritus status

D.B. Rao was a member of our faculty from 1966 to 1974 when he retired

Myron Corrin was a member of our faculty from 1967 to 1978 when he retired to Emeritus status

Bernhard Haurwitz was a member of our faculty from 1968 to 1978 when he retired to Emeritus status

Jim Rasmussen was a member of our faculty from 1968 to 1972

Steve Cox was a member of our faculty from 1969 to 2002 when he retired to Emeritus status

Alan Betts was a member of our faculty from 1970 to 1979

Tom Vonder Haar joined our faculty in 1970

Helen Poland was a member of our faculty from 1972 to 1976

Wayne Schubert joined our faculty in 1973

Bill Cotton was a member of our faculty from 1974 to 2011 when he retired to Emeritus status

Tom McKee was a member of our faculty from 1974 to 2000 when he retired to Emeritus status

Duane Stevens was a member of our faculty from 1978 to 1991 when he retired

Dick Johnson joined our faculty 1979

Dick Pearson Jr. was a member of our faculty from 1981 to 1988

Roger Pielke was a member of our faculty from 1981 to 2006 when he retired to Emeritus status

Graeme Stephens was a member of our faculty from 1984 to 2010 when he retired to Emeritus status

Dave Randall joined our faculty in 1988

Steve Rutledge joined our faculty in 1988

Sonia Kreidenweis joined our faculty in 1991

Mike Montgomery was a member of our faculty from 1992 to 2006

Jeff Collett joined our faculty in 1994 and is part of our current faculty

Scott Denning joined our faculty in 1998

Chris Kummerow joined our faculty in 2000

Dave Thompson joined our faculty in 2001

Hendrik Dijkstra was a member of our faculty from 2003 to 2005

Taka Ito was a member of our faculty from 2007 to 2011

Colette Heald was a member of our faculty from 2008 to 2011

Eric Maloney joined our faculty in 2008

Thomas Birner joined our faculty in 2009

Sue van den Heever joined our faculty in 2009

Russ Schumacher joined our faculty in August 2011