The Mountain Climate Program was initiated in 1952 to help increase our understanding of the ecology of the Front Range. Weather stations were established in each of four major ecological zones, spanning a 1,554 m altitudinal transect: lower montane forest at 2,200 m (A-1 site), upper montane forest at 2,621 m (B-1), subalpine forest at 3,022 m (C-1), and alpine tundra at 3,528 m (Saddle) 3,571 m (GL4) 3,739 m (D-1) and 3,814 m (Arikaree). The parameters measured include temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, precipitation, wind speed and direction, and barometric pressure. The weather record from D-1 is now the longest high-altitude record in North America. Data for the climate program, including archived meteorological data, current meteorological data, and climate summaries for C-1, Saddle, D-1, are available to the public. They are now collected in conjunction with the CU-LTER program and support research in many fields including biology, hydrology, field chemistry, and environmental energy budgets. A selection of posters shows some of the work that has been done with this data.
Niwot Ridge is also home to a Snotel site were depth and density of the snowpack is measured monthly December through April. View a daily Snow-Precipitation Update or a River Basin Precipitation Map. A Sno-tel Report can be aquired for all the Snotel sites in the United States. More climate data can be found at Western Regional Climate Center. Present weather and forcast information can be found at Unisys Weather.
An Ultraviolet Monitoring Station is operated at the Mountain Research Station in conjunction with the National Ultraviolet Monitoring Center. A graph of the UV data for this Rocky Mountain shows distinct differences between summer and winter ultraviolet radiation.
Atmospheric levels of CO2 have been monitored on Niwot Ridge since 1968, providing the second longest continuous record in the world of this important atmoshperic gas (the longest is from Mauna Loa, Hawaii starting in 1965). Since then, measurements have been greatly expanded to include not only the naturally occurring greenhouse gases, but also the anthropogenic greenhouse gases and ozone depletors on a 24 hour, 365 day/year basis. A contract with the Climate Monitoring and Diagnostic Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), provides support for continuing collection of CO2, CO, methane, hydrogen, chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's) 11, 12, 113, HCFC 22 and other CFC replacements, carbon tetrachloride, methyl chloroform, and nitrous oxide. These measurements are part of a CMDL global network of remote, "clean" air measurement sites.
The climate data set is also supplemented by data from the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, a network of over 200 sites which monitors the acidity and chemical composition of precipitation in the United States; wet and dry deposition samples have been collected once a week since 1984 and 1986 from two elevations near the station. Sugarloaf is a forested site recieving between 40 and 80 cm of annual precipitation. The Niwot Saddle is located in a windswept saddle on alpine tundra where about 80% of annual precipitation is from snow fall.
Return to the Niwot Ridge LTER Homepage
