The Colgate University Climate Network is a natural laboratory for understanding the interactions between the climate, hydrology, and the Colgate community. The goal of the network is to provide data for geosciences-informed, community-based science and teaching. The Colgate Climate Network is designed to provide an understanding of weather and climate forcing (how hot, how wet, how snowy, and how windy), hydrological response (where does the water go and how does it impact Colgate’s watersheds, campus, and community), and local variability (how are Colgate’s forests and fields responding differently from the built environment on campus or in the village of Hamilton).
The experimental observatory is aimed at generating a long-term record of climate change in the central New York region in order to better understand the local impacts of global climate change in the form of changes to temperature, precipitation patterns, hydrological systems, and biogeochemical systems.