Nolan J. Doesken, PhD.

State Climatologist Emeritus

Colorado Climate Center


Fields of Expertise

Climate Science, Hydrology

Areas of Interest

Citizen science, Colorado climate history, Drought, floods, precipitation measurements, Snow, weather and climate data, Floods


Biography

Nolan Doesken currently works part-time for the Colorado Climate Center and is a member of CSU’s Extension Water Team. He retired as State Climatologist for Colorado at Colorado State University in 2017. After obtaining degrees from the Univ. of Michigan and Univ. of Illinois in the 1970s, Nolan began his work as a climatologist at CSU in 1977 and was appointed State Climatologist in 2006. He has long been fascinated with climate monitoring and long-term climate trends but pays particularly close attention to precipitation including floods and drought. After the Fort Collins flash flood of 1997, Nolan established a volunteer rain gauge network to track and map the local variations in northern Colorado precipitation. This project-the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow network (CoCoRaHS)-has since grown internationally and involves thousands of volunteers across many parts of North America. Nolan is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was a founding board member of the Citizen Science Association.