CIRA is here to serve as a nexus for multi-disciplinary cooperation among CIRA and NOAA research scientists, University faculty, staff and students in the context of NOAA-specified research theme areas. Important elements of this mission are to foster collaboration with other national and international agencies developing related capabilities, to help transition fundamental research conducted at the University to bear on NOAA’s operational needs and to communicate the research findings to the broader scientific community. These objectives are coupled with a continued dedication to education and training programs for operational user proficiency, outreach programs to K-12 education and the general public for environmental literacy, and understanding and quantifying the societal impacts of NOAA research.
With NOAA and CSU support CIRA has operated a Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) Earth Station since 1980. Today our collection capability handles multiple simultaneous GOES transmissions, NOAA polar data, Himawari-8 and European MSG. CIRA also plays an important role in each new GOES satellite as one of the primary test sites for initial transmissions and sensor verification.
CIRA operates a high-technology infrastructure to support research in our major theme areas. The infrastructure contains over 300 workstations/servers, a satellite Earth Station with an online archive, several high-performance modelling clusters, and a high-speed network. With its expertise in data fusion, CIRA is developing systems and tools that will simplify the acquisition and manipulation of satellite and model data for scientific research.
