You didn’t have to be a solar expert to see stunning beauty in the images that satellite-borne instruments sent to Earth in the late 1990s. The sophisticated new tools sampled the Sun’s electromagnetic energy at a variety of wavelengths, resolutions, and intervals, producing data that were both visually compelling and rich in science-relevant detail.

Integration and collaboration were major themes as NCAR and UCAR made their way through the first decade of the new century.

Atmospheric research made enormous gains in the 1990s through the growth of high-speed data exchange facilitated by the Internet. At the same time, another byproduct of government research—the Global Positioning System—was bringing its own benefits to the field.

As a child on a Navajo reservation in Arizona, Carl Etsitty was both profoundly respectful of nature, declaring to Mother Earth that “I will forever be a steward of the land.” His reverence for the environment was paired with intense curiosity, but those attitudes clashed in the early 1990s when Etsitty went to college.

New branches of NCAR research sometimes emerge through the advent of new technology, a change in national priorities, or a disastrous weather event. Other research topics have threaded their way through the center’s entire half-century history.