By Sabrina Kliman, OSM/VISTA with Colorado River Watch, and the one scholarship recipient who was able to attend the Colorado Foundation for Water Education’s Climate and Colorado’s Water Future Workshop

I was really excited to be able to attend the 2013 Climate and Colorado’s Water Future workshop; not only would I get to tour the national ice core lab, but it was an opportunity to get out of the office and meet some other folks interested in water and climate change. There were some great speakers at this workshop, including Nolan Doesken (Colorado State Climatologist), Todd Hinkley (USGS), and Jeff Lukas (Western Water Assessment). It was also great to see the different people attending the workshop. There were people from horticultural societies, teachers, landscaping professionals, city employees, and state employees. It was a diverse group. It made it all the more interesting to talk to people when Kristin Maharg from the Colorado Foundation for Water Education asked us to agree or disagree with a statement about water. There were two statements presented – one of them was “We all should pay more for water.” It was a great exercise to talk to other people about their opinions and see where they were coming from.

Of course, the major highlight of the workshop was getting to learn about and see the national ice core lab. It boggles my mind that there are ice cores in that freezer from 1958. Such care has to be taken to make sure the cores stay in the appropriate position (it’s important to know which way is up!), and more importantly that they don’t sublimate while being in storage.

Being a weather geek, I also really enjoyed the presentation by Zach Schwalbe and Chris Spears of the Community Collaborative Rain Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) – the guys looked like they were having so much fun talking about it. Now I just wish I had a place to put a rain gauge so I could participate!