UCAR and NCAR have grown and matured in so many ways, keeping pace as the world around them has also changed. Over the last half century, we’ve watched environmental issues evolve from local foci to regional and global expanses.

By almost any metric, UCAR and NCAR have been successful since the time a half century ago when a small group of people, most of them university professors of atmospheric science, boldly envisioned a national center—run by and for the universities—which would not only serve science and society but also complement and strengthen the universities themselves.

For NCAR’s Don Middleton, the uneasy days after 9/11 shed unexpected light on the transformative power of global connectivity. Middleton had been scheduled to attend a meeting on advanced collaboratories in Italy, but the event was cancelled.

Whether or not they could be definitively linked to a changing climate, weather crises in the first years of the 2000s added regional exclamation points to the global possibilities raised by modeling and theory. A relentless 2003 heat wave in normally temperate Europe took tens of thousands of lives.

Issuing a five-day weather forecast was once a daring enterprise. Today, we’re not only accustomed to long-range weather forecasts but also to seasonal-scale outlooks. Hurricanes and sea ice show how far we've come.