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.

From its inception, NCAR provided a wide range of research-oriented computing and observing facilities. The initial focus was on centralized capabilities: networking was virtually nonexistent, and the huge cost of computers constrained university use.

Scientists in the UCAR community found themselves on the front lines of the cyber revolution that stormed the world in the 1990s. Many UCAR universities were early adopters of the World Wide Web, a technology well suited to a science that thrives on distributed data and collaboration.

Intrigued by an atmospheric mystery bringing down aircraft, a small group of scientists at NCAR embarked on a series of field studies from the late 1970s through the 1980s.