Transportation, electricity production and agriculture – these are just a few of the well-known sources of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Facing these challenges, carbon budgets and climate models have been developed to guide humanity’s response to the climate crisis. However, these fail to account for emissions from permafrost – perennially frozen soil most commonly found in the Northern Hemisphere.
For millennia, Arctic permafrost has served as a massive carbon sink, and it currently holds twice as much carbon as is in Earth’s atmosphere.
The Arctic is warming anywhere from two to four times as fast as the rest of the planet, while wildfires, which have increased in frequency and severity, destroy vegetation and organic matter, leaving permafrost more vulnerable to thawing. As these fires and rising temperatures take their toll, permafrost thaw is releasing greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), which further accelerate climate warming and contribute to a carbon feedback loop.
Moore Foundation grantee Woodwell Climate Research Center (Woodwell), a global leader in climate science, has been at the forefront of efforts to better understand the impacts of permafrost thaw and wildfires on Arctic carbon cycling. Moore has partnered with Woodwell on several Environmental Conservation Program grants over the years, including extensive work in the Andes-Amazon. When Denny Takahashi-Kelso, director of the foundation's Marine Conservation Initiative, connected Science Program Officer Gary Greenburg with Woodwell in 2019, their Arctic carbon monitoring project needed initial funding. While helpful, traditional government grants weren’t enough to enable the broad scope of the project and tend to be more risk-averse, lending themselves to more incremental gains. Greenburg recognized that while the project was an unproven, long-term venture, the potential for Woodwell’s research to enhance our understanding of the drivers of climate change and improve climate models made it worth supporting.
During this latest partnership, researchers Susan Natali, Ph.D. and Brendan Rogers, Ph.D. have been developing an Arctic Carbon Monitoring and Prediction system that utilizes field research, remote sensing data gathered by satellites, and computer modeling to observe and forecast these effects. Field observations quantify emissions from permafrost thaw and wildfire, remote sensing allows those observations to be scaled up from flagship sites to the full region, and process modeling allows these emissions to be forecast into the future to ultimately guide climate policy.
This cutting-edge work has earned Woodwell a spot among the latest cohort of Audacious Project grantees.
A collaborative funding initiative housed at TED, The Audacious Project supports bold efforts to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges and has catalyzed over $900 million for their latest group of projects, including $41 million for Woodwell. It is a tremendous achievement for Woodwell, one that positions them to ramp up their work on understanding and shaping responses to climate change for years to come. Woodwell’s success highlights the importance of carefully identifying grantees and projects with the potential to change their fields, even if the path forward is not completely clear or easy to accomplish.
“We’re looking for those gems that will really pay off, even though we don’t know if that will happen because the science is so uncertain,” Greenburg said.
“You have to be optimistic and look at programs for their future."
The Moore Foundation partnered with Woodwell to put things in motion, and Woodwell was then able to leverage the initial funding to raise additional money from other sources and reach their fundraising goals. partnered with Woodwell to put things in motion, and Woodwell was then able to leverage the initial funding to raise additional money from other sources and reach their fundraising goals.
Greenburg further explained the thought process behind those first steps, emphasizing that the foundation supports early and high-risk research to help projects get off the ground, grow and acquire additional funding. “I like to consider our relationships with grantees as a partnership. In this case, the Moore Foundation provided part of the initial funding and asked the grantee to try to raise the rest. In my experience, this often results in a better research program because it builds community interest and helps the grantee hone their message and focus the science.”
Woodwell is also developing a web visualization platform to communicate findings with the public, helping global policymakers and Arctic residents alike recognize and adapt to the realities of permafrost emissions. There is a pressing need for this data to be included in the next round of global climate agreements to ensure accurate projections of future temperature rise.
“From a global climate perspective, we’re talking about a potential large tipping event that is not being monitored, projected and accounted for."Brendan Rogers, associate scientist at Woodswell Climate Research Center
Rogers noted that the initial seeding from Moore began to open doors for them, furthering progress towards this goal. “I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that the Moore Foundation funding was very critical, and it comes from taking a chance on something that is both important and has a big-picture outcome,” he said. It allowed them to develop the relationships that formed the backbone of the project, setting them up to make the most of the $41 million award they are receiving through the Audacious Project.
Among these partnerships are collaborations with the Alaska Institute for Justice and the Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, including Dr. John Holdren, aimed at using the science to shape climate policy. The Arctic Initiative helps share findings with U.S. and international policymakers, while Alaska Institute for Justice brings human rights expertise and ties to Alaska Native communities. Tying the data to the policy will allow discoveries from this work to enter discussions at the global level.
Co-production of knowledge is another fundamental approach of this grantee.
In addition to scientists, Woodwell works with Arctic and Indigenous communities, who are dealing with the consequences of climate change in real time and face challenges to their traditional ways of life, to better understand the effects on the Arctic environment. These communities face risks from land subsidence, threats to their traditional culture, and concerns surrounding food and water security.
“I’ll have a conversation with Arctic residents, who are telling me about these changes that they’re seeing on the ground. They know so much, and it’s from a totally different perspective,” Natali said. Marrying modern technology with Indigenous knowledge has proven to produce better, more inclusive science with mutual benefits, strengthening results through a collaborative process that brings in voices that all too often have been disregarded.
Over the next five years, the project will have to adapt to what the world looks like and needs, and having established a solid base makes taking the next steps easier. “We already have these partnerships set up. If we got this Audacious Project and were starting from our normal government grants, I don’t know how we would implement this,” Natali said. “The Moore funding allowed us to think big and scale up.”
Going forward, the team is excited to have the resources to respond to the shifting political and environmental landscapes. Among the areas they’d like to address are building systems to support communities that are dealing with climate change adaptation and relocation along with continuing to support their existing monitoring work. While there are certainly challenges ahead, there is reason to be optimistic as projects like this one move to spread awareness and focus on these global issues. “Permafrost is a big problem, but it’s an even bigger problem when we do nothing,” Natali said. “And as we reduce global emissions and deforestation, we also get the added bonus of reducing what could be coming out of permafrost. This is a concern, but we’re not falling off a cliff. We can reduce the harm by taking action.”
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