2025 News & Events

The highest honor award granted by the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal, recognizes federal employees for superior performance and is awarded to individuals, groups (or teams), and organizations.

The team spans science and engineering, administration, IT support and program management. CSL's Troy Thornberry, Charles Brock, Steven Brown, Amy Butler, Steven Ciciora, Gregory Frost, Sara Gibbons, Renee Jeong, Ronda Knott, Daniel Murphy, Doug Ohlhorst, Andrew Rollins, Karen Rosenlof, Gregory Schill, Joshua Schwarz, Chelsea Thompson, and Catherine Weable, along with Victoria Breeze (NOAA CPO) and Bradley Hall (NOAA GML), receive a NOAA Bronze Medal for scientific/engineering achievement "for establishing a new paradigm for NOAA-directed stratospheric science with the successful execution of the Stratospheric Aerosol processes, Budget and Radiative Effects (SABRE) 2023 airborne science mission." They are recognized with CSL's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) affiliates Adam Ahern, Alex Baron, Samantha DeLone, Colin Gurganus, Eric Jensen, Mike Lawler, Ming Lyu, Catherine Rasco, Eric Ray, Mike Robinson, Sam Taylor, and Eleanor Waxman, and GML's CIRES affiliates Elizabeth (Lizzy) Asher, Patrick Cullis, Geoff Dutton, Eric Hintsa, Fred Moore, and David Nance. Also recognized for their contributions, but no longer CIRES affiliates at CSL, are Gordon Novak, Kenneth Aikin, Chris Jernigan, Georgia Michailoudi, Rudra Pokhrel, Kristen Zuraski, and Tony Fodel, and Zachary Lawrence (formerly CIRES at NOAA PSL).

The NOAA Stratospheric Aerosol processes, Budget and Radiative Effects (SABRE) 2023 deployment was the first fully NOAA initiated, funded, organized and led stratospheric airborne science mission and was both the culmination of years of effort and the first in a multi-year, multi-deployment project.

The team is honored for its remarkable accomplishments in conceiving, planning and executing the 2023 NOAA SABRE airborne science mission. It deployed new instrumentation and collected a remarkable dataset that is already producing meaningful results that change the atmospheric science community's understanding of chemical and physical processes occurring in the stratosphere and will contribute to improving NOAA Earth system modeling in the years to come.

In situ measurements deep into the northern polar stratosphere are critical for understanding a range of stratospheric processes that play important roles in Earth's climate system, but are difficult to achieve due to the challenge of operating state of the art scientific instruments at stratospheric altitudes. The team spent years developing new, advanced instrumentation capable of making the necessary measurements in the challenging stratospheric environment and formulating the mission plan to achieve the science goals. Successfully accomplishing the mission required overcoming a range of technical, logistical and bureaucratic hurdles and working to integrate the instruments on a NASA WB-57F high altitude research aircraft and operate them under harsh conditions while deployed to Eielson AFB, Alaska in the winter.

These esteemed award recipients will be honored at the next NOAA Awards Ceremony held at NOAA Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, and recognized at the next NOAA OAR Awards Ceremony held at NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. CIRES award recipients will be recognized at the CIRES Rendezvous held on the University of Colorado Boulder campus in May 2026.