Woodwell Climate Research Centre funds risky, high-impact climate science through its internal Fund for Climate Solutions. Since 2018, it's made rapid decisions on proof-of-concept work like Arctic permafrost monitoring and soil carbon sensing that later attracted $2.5M from the Moore Foundation and partnerships with Harvard.
Questions this video answers
2018
Two rounds per year
$2.5 million (Moore Foundation)
Chapters
Woodwell Climate was founded over 35 years ago by George Woodwell. We're a bunch of leading scientists focusing our energies on climate change. But not just doing the science, we also devote much of our time and energy to the solutions.
When we look at how much climate has changed in the last 15 years and where it will be in 15 years, it is frightening how fast the change will occur. How are we going to slow down climate change with every opportunity we can get?
One of the things I like about the Woodwell Climate Research Centre is we actually straddle the full range of climate science from ground based field research to answer very constrained tight questions, all the way up to broader questions that cover continental scales or global scales. We have people who understand that science enough to explain it to policymakers without.
Having a mechanism to fund risky projects. Some of the most groundbreaking research will never get off the ground.
We decided to fund our own scientists to do the leading edge, high risk work that traditional funding really doesn't tend to fund.
The Fund for Climate Solutions is an internal funding competition. It was founded in 2018. We have two rounds of funding each year. And one of the wonderful things about the Fund for Climate Solution is that the decisions are made very quickly. One example of that is with some of Sue Natali's work. Her early Fund for Climate Solution project funded a piece of equipment that allowed her to make some cutting edge measurements in the Arctic about greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost.
It led almost immediately to a $2.5 million grant from the Moore foundation which includes funding for partnership with Harvard's Belford center which will the policy part. So we provide the science and Harvard is making the policy connections and making sure that our science is incorporated in the global carbon budget that IPCC is going to put out at the next cop. That is the target which the countries of the world aspire to meet.
We've been able to start a few different projects really focused on trying to expand our ability to measure soil carbon and soil carbon change. Soil scientists have been really stuck with essentially antiquated analytical tools. And so the work I'm doing is really trying to change that and bring data science and modern sensor technologies into soil science. And this is risky work. It's hard to get funded. And so the Fund for Climate Solutions really enabled us to start build some proof of concept studies that have now gone on to get large funding and building up a big research program.
We've been living through a very stable climate. That's over. We are in for disasters. We never anticipated, we are in for wildfires we never anticipated. All of the impacts of climate change are coming home now.
The science is really important to know that we're making the right decisions now for the long term.
Having this internal funding source greatly amplifies the impact of the scientists at Woodwell Climate. When an individual makes a contribution to the Fund for Climate Solutions, they can be sure that their dollars are being put to work. And given the urgency of the climate crisis, there's no more important thing to do.
As climate change speeds up, we're really the best positioned to be on the front lines of getting the answers right. With now, you can't solve a problem that you don't understand. I can't imagine a better team to be able to get to understanding the issues behind climate change than the one that we've got.
