Mailing Address:
NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory
325 Broadway R/GML
Boulder CO 80305-3328
Phone: 303-497-6655
Email: Brian.Vasel@noaa.gov
Brian Vasel is the Director of Observatory Operations for the NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML). The observatory management team oversees the overall operations, budgeting, facility management, staffing, vehicles, and logistics for NOAA’s four Atmospheric Baseline Observatories (ABOs). For GML, Brian also serves on the Executive Team representing operational requirements, and assists with NEPA, safety, congressional affairs, serves as the ESRL Radiation Safety Officer (RSO), and co-leads the Global Monitoring Annual Conference (GMAC) each May. He has served on the Inter-Agency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) Field Operations Working Group, as a member of the 2020 Antarctic Treaty Inspection Team with the U.S. State Department, South Pole User Committee (SPUC), and the OAR NEPA Compliance Team. In addition, he was previously a member of the NOAA Green Team, Deep Water Horizon Response Team, Summit Greenland Long-Range Planning Team, and the NOAA Polar Committee. He was also a participant and a coach in the OAR Leadership Effectiveness and Advancement Program (LEAP). Brian strongly believes in the importance of long-term, ground-based climate observations, supporting collaborative field science, “greening” the observatories, and the critical role of outreach to inform society.
Brian has made 10 trips to Antarctica including “wintering-over” twice at the South Pole as the technician to maintain GML’s instrumentation for climate research. He has deployed to Summit, Greenland numerous times and visited other international field sites in Antarctica, Australia, Canada, Russia, South Africa, and Switzerland. He also created the GML tropospheric aircraft ozone program working with a private-sector instrument manufacturer to develop a specialized and robust instrument that was then deployed on over a dozen small aircraft across the United States.
Outside of the office, Brian is a volunteer firefighter and enjoys the mountain playground of Colorado and travel. He can often be found on local mountain bike trails, camping, hiking, and skiing the trees.