Canopy - Winter 2019 by Woodwell Climate Research Center

Canopy Woods Hole Research Center

WINTER 2019

Guardians of the Forest WHRC helps indigenous communities and forest managers prepare for climate change

Also in this issue Alaska Native climate migrants Major initiative with Wellington Management announced WHRC welcomes prominent climate scientist Jennifer Francis, and visionary economist Spencer Glendon

Contents Canopy Woods Hole Research Center Canopy is published by Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) in Falmouth, Massachusetts. WHRC is an independent research organization where scientists study climate change and how to solve it, from the Amazon to the Arctic.

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From the President Preparing for climate change in the Amazon A Force for Arctic Science: Dr. Jennifer Francis joins WHRC Capital markets at risk from climate change Guest essay: A price, but at what cost? Interview with Rafe Pomerance The Amazon Climate Source American climate refugees are here. Government aid isn’t. WHRC conducts research with the Department of Defense Incoming Directors and President’s Council Members Board of Directors and Staff Financial statements Fiscal year 2017-2018 donors Science Under the Stars

cover: WHRC led a series of Amazon climate workshops in Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru last spring. In Peru, workshop participants arrived in Wayquecha during the season of Inti Raymi, the Incan “sun festival.” During this time around the solstice, the Quechua-speaking people from the region come together to celebrate Inti, the Incan god of the sun. Some workshop participants hiked to the Tres Cruces overlook before dawn to wait for sunrise and witness the celebration. People were singing and dancing, wearing their traditional dress, and huddled together against the cold. It was a clear morning and when the sun rose there was a direct line of site from the hilltop to the lowland Amazon rainforest. // photo Alexander Nassikas top: Research Associate Kathleen Savage heading to one of her sites at Harvard forest to measure soil respiration, the flux of carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide) from forest soils. Having a 20-year record at Harvard Forest helps in understanding the daily, annual, interannual, and long-term trends in the release of carbon from these soils. // photo Tad Ryan

President & Executive Director Dr. Philip B. Duffy

Vice President, Strategy & Advancement Alison Smart Senior Director, Communications & Government Relations David McGlinchey Graphic Designer Julianne Waite Editor Elizabeth Bagley

Images Chris Linder, Connor Murphy, Alexander Nassikas, Tad Ryan Woods Hole Research Center 149 Woods Hole Road Falmouth, MA 02540 Email: info@whrc.org Website: whrc.org Newsletter Subscribe online at whrc.org

Copyright All material appearing in Canopy is copyrighted unless otherwise stated or it may rest with the provider of the supplied material. Canopy takes care to ensure information is correct at time of printing.

2018: The year in climate change

From the President

The year just ended was notable for the striking divergence between increasing physical manifestations of climate change—together with heightened public awareness of the problem—and a contradictory decrease in policy action. Impacts of climate change, such as wildfires, hurricanes, and extreme heat, seemed to hit us over the head, even as our federal government industriously dismantled policies to cope with a problem it won’t admit is real.

Lately I’ve been reading climate science papers from the 1970s and 1980s, including some by WHRC founder George Woodwell. It is astonishing how accurately these papers predicted the manifestations of climate change, years and even decades before they were observed. The first observational “detection and attribution” of human-caused climate change did not come until 1995.

In the subsequent 23 years, human-caused climate change has grown from something detectable only in careful statistical analyses to a costly and deadly monster.

2018 began with the announcement by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that 2017 had been the 3rd warmest on record, behind 2016 and 2015. (In February of this year, both NOAA and NASA reported that 2018 was the 4th warmest year on record.) February then brought a heatwave to the Arctic and unprecedented wildfire to northern Sweden. Such events have increased in frequency and duration as a result of climate change. In March, four Nor’easters struck New England. As shown by WHRC’s Dr. Jennifer Francis and others, this type of persistent extreme mid-latitude weather is an expected consequence of rapid Arctic warming. In July, what may be the highest temperature ever reliably measured anywhere (124.3 F) was recorded in Algeria. In late summer, Hurricane Harvey dumped over 50” of rain on Houston, and Hurricane Florence struck the Carolinas – both storms exhibiting expected consequences of climate change such as high precipitation rates, slow propagation speeds, and rapid intensification. Then Hurricane Michael became the most powerful storm to strike Florida in modern history. In November, the largest wildfire in California’s history destroyed the town of Paradise. While these impacts unfolded, our capacity for denial, procrastination, and excessive celebration of half-measures seems to have grown in proportion. At a hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks suggested to me that sea level rise is caused by erosion, rather than by climate change. In August, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed “environmental terrorist groups” for western US wildfires.

And yet there is still cause for optimism. The Paris climate agreement remains a good framework for addressing climate change. With sufficient ambition, it could be very effective. WHRC is working to that end—helping developing countries to meet their Paris commitments—through an agreement signed last February with the Climate Policy Lab at the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The costs of wind and solar energy have declined dramatically, making them competitive with fossil fuels and leading to more rapid than anticipated adoption. Early experiences with real-world climate policymaking indicate that well-designed policies can have positive economic impacts immediately. This suggests that the oft-cited tradeoff between environmental health and economic vitality, which has to be false in the long run, doesn’t apply in the short term, either. We always underestimate the potential for technological innovation, so to the extent that this can help to solve climate change, we should feel heartened.

Finally, the ongoing groundswell of action by cities, states, corporations, philanthropies, and individuals is not only encouraging but substantive. In 2018, WHRC launched climate change initiatives with a range of partners, from the Boston archdiocese of the Catholic Church to global investment firm Wellington Management. Broad-based “bottom-up” action on climate change will create a strong constituency that will lead sooner or later—I suspect sooner—to ambitious federal policies. What can we expect in the coming year? The impacts of climate change—extreme heat, turbocharged hurricanes, and so on— will continue to become more severe, although with unpredictable year-to-year variability. Immediate prospects for successful climate legislation in the US Congress remain dim, but we can at least expect the amount and quality of discourse in the House of Representatives to improve (it wouldn’t take much). And here at WHRC, we will continue to work with public- and privatesector partners to inform climate-related policies and decisions, and to conduct world-class research illuminating the causes and effects of climate change, as well as possible solutions. And of course we will continue to raise our voices in support of sane, science-based climate policies.

Philip B. Duffy President and Executive Director

Winter 2019

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Preparing for climate change in the

MA ZON

by Connor Murphy

On a Monday morning, a group of indigenous leaders, scientists, and forest managers rose at dawn at a research station in Peru’s Andean cloud forest. Sun splashed through the windows of a tall lecture hall, illuminating the ceiling’s long wooden beams. Inside, a translator worked with dozens of people to navigate scientific terms in three languages.

It was the first day of a workshop to discuss strategies to protect the Amazon. The Amazon is the largest tropical forest in the world, storing 40 percent of all tropical forest carbon and accounting for 15 percent of global photosynthesis. It covers more than 1.7 billion acres, stretching across nine countries. If the Amazon rainforest were a country, it would be the seventh largest in the world.

The carbon stored in this immense tropical forest is critical to the trajectory of climate change. The more carbon that remains locked up in trees, the less there is in the atmosphere. But deforestation and forest degradation (the death or removal of individual trees) are again on the rise. Exacerbating the issue, Brazil’s new president has signaled a lack of support for protected forest areas. And while these human pressures increase, climate change impacts are taking a toll, with drought and wildfires 4

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ravaging areas of forest. While almost no fires occurred in indigenous reserves prior to 2006, wildfires are now seen every three to five years in drier regions.

On the frontlines of this struggle are land managers, government officials, and indigenous leaders responsible for managing and protecting the forests.

In the summer of 2018, Woods Hole Research Center scientists held four workshops to deliver the latest and best climate science to the people responsible for the future of the Amazon.

“Over the last decade, we’ve spent a lot of energy creating datasets on biomass and climate in the region. Too much of that information has stayed in the realm of scientific publications, and has not really reached managers in the region,” said WHRC scientist Dr. Marcia Macedo. “There are a lot of people on the ground working in this space— people who are hungry for information to help them adapt to climate change. We want to translate our science into accessible formats that can inform their day-to-day management and broader policy decisions.” The workshops were supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and held in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. All told, more than 125 attendees from at least 50 institutes took part in the weeklong trainings. The events were based around a

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new tool developed by WHRC—the Climate Source (amazonclimatesource. org)—a website that uses satellite imagery and climate data to provide detailed projections on climate change impacts like temperature trends, extreme weather events, dry season lengths, and precipitation. Clicking on a specific region brings up an easyto-read toolbar, with options to look at historical data or projections over different future time periods. “People who are managing forests often don’t have the time to dig into the scientific data, or read all the latest publications. The value of this data portal is that it condenses the latest science for the user in an accessible way,” Macedo said. “We can’t imagine all the potential applications for this kind of information.” Attendees said that having access to climate data from a reputable and impartial scientific research organization was critical to getting it integrated into policies, regulations, and planning. “When science is credible, legitimate, and relevant, then it can be delivered most effectively into policy,” said Julia Shimbo, a researcher at IPAM, WHRC’s longtime partner institution in Brazil.

“We need to be able to manage protected areas using scientific climate data,” said Carlos Mogollon, an ecological engineer who works in the Peruvian Amazon for the national government agency that manages protected areas. Mogollon attended the Peruvian workshop in June. “We only have the perception of the climate change that we see

A screenshot of the Amazon Climate Source (amazonclimatesource.org), which provides data and projections on climate change impacts (such as temperature, precipitation, and dry season length) for distinct regions and protected areas. happening in the protected areas. The challenge is to link those changes to scientific data. From there, we need to identify adaptation measures.” Macedo said that WHRC scientists want “to create a network of data savvy managers, and to translate [the data] in ways that can be passed on and taken up.” That network has already begun to develop, with connections forged during the workshops growing into online message groups and virtual collaboration. Within a month of attending the workshop, one Bolivian scientist was training other colleagues on how to use the Climate Source data. WHRC scientists explained that the data were based on climate models from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“For future projections, we synthesized 25 global climate models from the IPCC,” said WHRC scientist Dr. Andrea Castanho. “The models don’t predict exactly the same future conditions, but they do show a trend.” The ultimate goal, according to WHRC scientist Dr. Michael Coe, is a cadre of land managers who understand the

climate data well enough to prepare for impacts, and to conserve critical areas of forest. “We figure you are better off if you are informed. It’s been very hard for anyone who isn’t a scientist to ingest climate science data. You have to be very technical to be able to do that. So our goal is to take this technical stuff and make it very available,” Coe said. “We take complex information and make it accessible.”

He said that the team worked with endusers throughout the development, to ensure that the final product would be useful. Coe gave credit to IPAM for the philosophy that “you don’t try to change the user to understand the graph, you change the graph to fit the user.” As a result, he said, the workshop attendees threw themselves into the climate science. “People have been very engaged. I think they come away with something new,” Coe said. “Already we’ve seen people go home from the last workshops and spread what they’ve learned to their colleagues. That’s exactly what we’d like to see.” Winter 2019

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A FORCE FOR ARCTIC SCIENCE

Dr. Jennifer Francis joins WHRC by Dave McGlinchey

off of the glaciers. That first night was probably the scariest part of our entire trip.”

They were forced to retreat, turning back to Iceland and eventually re-routing directly south. The detour added 6,000 miles to their trip, but Francis was hooked by the idea of better understanding weather patterns.

efore Dr. Jennifer Francis was a world-renowned atmospheric scientist. Before she pioneered the idea that a rapidly warming Arctic affects weather at lower latitudes. Before she became the go-to quote for journalists covering extreme weather in the age of climate change. Before she became the newest senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center. Before any of that, Jen Francis sailed to the Arctic.

In the early 1980s, Francis took a break from her undergraduate studies and took five years to sail a 45-foot sloop around the world with her husband. “As part of that we went up to the Arctic. This was pre-GPS. This was pre-cell phones. It was before you could get good weather information,” Francis said. “We went up to Svalbard (Norway), and the weather information we could find was basically useless.” The couple sailed from Norway to Iceland, and then planned to continue on to Greenland and down the coast of North America to Massachusetts. When they left Iceland it was midSeptember, with 12 hours of daily darkness. “Immediately we started seeing icebergs, which was unexpected and bad,” Francis said. “Not small icebergs, the size of houses. It had been a really warm, early summer in eastern Greenland. So a lot more ice than normal had broken 8

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Back on land, she returned to school at San Jose State University where she earned a bachelors degree in meteorology. She decided that she wanted to focus on research, not forecasting, and got her Ph.D from the University of Washington. “I’ve been studying the Arctic my entire career, really starting as an undergad,” Francis said. “It goes back to when my husband and I sailed up the Arctic in 1984. I knew then what I wanted when I went back to school.”

Now, more than three decades later, her research is focused on unseasonably warm weather and the resulting impacts. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and Francis has zeroed in on the connection between that warming, and weather changes in mid-latitudes. The crux of her work is that a warmer Arctic disrupts the flow of air from lower latitudes toward the poles. That disruption, in turn, has disrupted and redirected the jet stream. She joined the Woods Hole Research Center from Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences in September to continue this research.

“I feel like we are just scratching the surface of how a rapidly warming Arctic is affecting weather patterns at mid-latitudes. There is a lot more work to do,” Francis said. “That’s really where I plan to focus, with the ultimate goal of knowing what to expect in the future, in the next decade to four decades. That’s really the window where policymakers need to think about decisions they have to make. Decisions about infrastructure. Really expensive decisions that have to be made and they

left: At the 2016 Arctic Matters Day, hosted by The National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Francis presented on the connection between weather and a melting Arctic | above: Dr. Francis and her husband in the 1980s, navigating through sea ice on the way to their boat. shouldn’t be made in a vacuum. They should be made with good information.” Three years ago, Francis spoke at a WHRC public event. And in 2016, she discussed Arctic warming with a panel of WHRC scientists on the main stage at the annual Arctic Circle conference in Reykjavik. But the news that she was joining the WHRC staff sent a buzz of excitement through the headquarters building.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to have Jen Francis at WHRC,” said WHRC Deputy Director Dr. Max Holmes. “I’ve greatly admired her for many years. In fact if I had my choice of any scientist in the world to add to our staff, she’d be the one. She shows how changes in the Arctic are impacting extreme weather outside of the Arctic, including where most of us live.” Francis’ research has received significant academic attention, but she has also broken out to a wider range of outlets.

“Not only does she do cutting-edge science, but she does a superb job of communicating her research to broad public audiences,” Holmes said.

When historically low temperatures struck the midwest of the United States earlier this year, Francis appeared on PBS’ News Hour to discuss the latest research on climate change and disruptions to the polar vortex, and was interviewed by the New York Times, the Associated Press, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and numerous other outlets. In 2018, she authored an op-ed in the Washington Post on the extreme weather phenomenon and was quoted in publications nationwide about record-breaking hurricanes. She has appeared on cable news and National Public Radio, and has spoke to countless audiences. “There is the communications side that I spend a lot of my time doing, taking these complicated research results and weaving them into story,” Francis said. “I talk to media. With an event like Hurricane Michael or Hurricane Florence I probably talked to six media people every day. I do a lot of writing for more targeted journals. And I’ll talk to just about anybody. I see that as a really important aspect of my job. I didn’t plan on that. I kind of got thrown into it. But I really like it.” Winter 2019

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Capital markets at risk from climate change by Dave McGlinchey

In September, Woods Hole Research Center and Wellington Management announced a ground-breaking alliance to integrate climate science and asset management.

Boston-based Wellington Management is one of the world’s largest independent investment management firms, with more than 2,200 institutional clients and more than one trillion dollars of client assets under management – as of summer 2018. The collaboration developed over the course of a year, with conversations initiated by Spencer Glendon – formerly Wellington’s director of investment research – who joined WHRC this fall as a senior fellow (see his essay on next page). “Climate change is the defining challenge of our time. It will impact all areas of society, including financial markets,” said WHRC President Philip Duffy. “Collaboration is an important way for us to amplify our impact and we are excited about the opportunity to work with Wellington to influence how an important industry thinks about climate change.”

This new initiative will focus on creating quantitative models to help analyze and better understand how and where climate change may impact global capital markets. Wellington and WHRC will collaborate on a broad range of projects, including developing investor tools and innovative analytical methods seeking to improve climate risk assessment and investment outcomes. Wellington will use modeling on climate change impacts—such as sea level rise, drought, heat, and precipitation—to directly inform investment decisions. 10

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The work is already underway, and is being led by WHRC Project Scientist Zachary Zobel, an atmospheric scientist whose previous work focused on understanding how climate extremes are changing in the United States. WHRC will use the research that comes out of the project to publish academic papers. The initiative is off to a great start, and we’re working well together,” Zobel said. “But we’ve also been able to maintain a careful, steady, and collaborative scientific approach.”

“We look forward to working with WHRC to thoroughly understand and accurately interpret the latest climate science research and the potential implications of climate change for capital markets,” said Wendy Cromwell, Wellington’s director of sustainable investment. “We believe an indepth appreciation of the risks and opportunities presented by climate change will enhance our ability to help our clients achieve their investment objectives.”

California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest public pension fund in the United States, will work with Wellington and WHRC

to apply these investment insights. CalPERS had more than $351 billion in assets as of June, 2018.

“As a long-term investor, we’re continually looking to sharpen our ability to analyze climate risk in our investment portfolio and in underwriting prospective investments,” said Beth Richtman, CalPERS managing investment director for sustainable investments. In November, Duffy discussed the initiative in depth with Wellington Managing Director Chris Goolgasian during one of the company’s client meetings.

“We are a scientific research organization, we do research into causes and effects of climate change … but our real goal is to go beyond generating the knowledge and to bring scientific knowledge into decision making,” Duffy said. “So we are really excited to have the opportunity to work with Wellington and what we hope to do is to use our scientific understanding of climate change in a collaboration to help inform their thinking about this whole category of risk.”

GUEST ESSAY

A price, but at what cost? by Spencer Glendon

When I was in graduate school, John Kenneth Galbraith gave a talk. Galbraith was a Professor Emeritus in the Economics Department, but in the crowded audience of curious people, I was the only person from the Economics Department. By this time Galbraith was considered both a has-been and “not really an economist” by mainstream economists. It was the mid-1990s and empiricism and mathematics were essential. Galbraith’s work hadn’t been mathematically complex or rigorous; he had sometimes advocated unorthodox policies including price controls; and he had worked in government during both the Depression and WWII and later was Ambassador to India. He had written mostly for the public and had undoubtedly been wrong about some things along the way. I didn’t know what I would learn at the talk, but I did know that he had always been kind to students and had a long life’s worth of experience. Plus it was free. His first five minutes were as vivid and astute an observation as I have ever heard, and they perfectly explained the state of economic conversations about climate change.

Galbraith moved to the podium and asked the audience to imagine a history book. He held up his long-fingered right hand as if holding a thick volume by its spine. “Think about the sections of a history book,” he said, running his left hand across the pages of the closed, imagined book. “Note that there are long, uneventful stretches of time that take up very few pages, while thick sections focus on very brief periods of time.” It was the long, uneventful stretches, he went on to argue, that

modern economics sought to explain. This advanced discipline was an exercise in explaining the smooth years and offered no advance warning or guidance for the times when the really important stuff happened.

Unknown to me at the time, 133 miles to the southwest of that room in Harvard Yard, an economist named William Nordhaus was in his office at Yale, working on models of how the economy would react to climate change. These models used rigorous data and modeling. They produced precise estimates. They were not written for the public but for academics and government. Nordhaus produced clear, smooth charts of the future as his models took all of the messiness out of this important topic. His papers clarified what Nordhaus described as the crucial choice of climate change: how much to pay for it. Over and over again, his answer was essentially, “not much because climate change isn’t really a big deal.” Here is the final paragraph his 1992 paper “Rolling the ‘Dice’: An Optimal Transition Path for Controlling Greenhouse Gases”: Even though there are differences among the cases studied here, the overall economic growth projected over the coming years swamps the projected impacts of climate change or of the policies to offset climate change. In these scenarios, future generations are likely to be worse off as a result of climate change, but they are still likely to be much better off than current generations. In looking at this graph, I was reminded of Tom Schelling’s remark a few years ago that the difference between a climate change and no-climate-change scenario

Spencer Glendon addresses a group of WHRC guests in Boston’s financial district in November 2018. would be thinner than the line drawn by a number 2 pencil to draw the curves. Thanks to the improved resolution of computer graphics, we can barely spot the difference! This fall William Nordhaus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work. I don’t know if or how Galbraith will be remembered by posterity, but I have little doubt that Nordhaus will be studied for a long time to come, and that such study will find his work—and that of his climate economics collaborator, Thomas Schelling—to have been a leading cause of the dramatic, painful time that is approaching as our long, boring, not-much-happening-here period of economics comes to an end at the hands of climate change. The difference between the climate change scenario and the no-climate-change scenario will be much wider than a line drawn by a number 2 pencil. Woods Hole Research Center and the Nordhaus family have an oddly bookended relationship. In his 1975 paper, “Can We Control Carbon Winter 2019

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GUEST ESSAY

Per Capita Consumption [1989 US$ per person] Dioxide?” Nordhaus cites George Woodwell’s work on land biomass extensively. This is the paper that many people cite as the first to introduce the “limit” or “target” of 2°C. In that paper Nordhaus offers different scenarios and comes to what he calls the surprising conclusion that there is no payoff to doing anything about carbon emissions until society approaches a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels, or somewhere around 2020.

By the time George Woodwell gave his testimony to the US Senate Committee on Energy and Resources in June of 1988, he was the Director of the Woods Hole Research Center, whose purpose was to take the insights of science beyond academia so that society could coordinate to stabilize the climate. His testimony offered 11 points of scientific consensus. This testimony could be delivered again today with barely an edit. The concepts have all held true, and the forecasts have been accurate. Points 2 and 11 are worth repeating verbatim: 2. The warming marks the transition from a period of stable climates to climatic instability. Stable or very slowly changing climates have prevailed during the development of civilization. 11. The changes in climate anticipated over the next decades extend beyond the limits of experience and beyond the limits of accurate prediction. Woodwell was warning that models that were based on our recent, stable past and that could only predict gradual, smooth change were not going to work well. What did the economists do with scientists’ warning?

In the early 1970s Schelling was already famous for his simple, elegant models that helped frame difficult questions of strategy and conflict, especially in relation to nuclear arms. His slim volume, Micromotives and Macrobehaviors, is one of my favorite

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Per capita consumption (1989 US $)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1965

1985 Optimal1

2005

2025 2045 Time

20% cut2

Uncont3

2065

2085

2105

Geoeng4

Graph illustrating Nordhaus’ predicted consumption in the four cases outlined in his 1992 paper Rolling the ‘Dice’: An Optimal Transition Path for Controlling Greenhouse Gases. 1Optimal economic policies to slow climate change; 220% cut in CFC and CO2 emissions from 1990 levels; 3No policies to slow or reverse climate change; 4Geoengineering of technology to provide costless reduction of climate change. books. Having been good at thinking about one existential problem that hadn’t turned out badly, he was a popular choice to work on climate change as the science came into existence. Schelling, however, wasn’t a data person. That work was done by his friend William Nordhaus. Nordhaus’s non-climate work had highlighted the power of human innovation in development (he is perhaps best known for his work on the decreasing cost of artificial light over time). Together Schelling and Nordhaus made a number of speculative pronouncements that wound up being the central arguments for inaction. Schelling, in his own summary of the issue decades later in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics says:

The models of global warming project only gradual changes. Climates will “migrate” slowly. The climate of Kansas may become like Oklahoma’s, but not like that of Oregon or Massachusetts. But a caveat is in order: the models

probably cannot project discontinuities because nothing goes into them that will produce drastic change. There may be phenomena that could produce drastic changes, but they are not known with enough confidence to introduce into the models. This is perhaps the greatest weakness of the economics of climate change. The economists knew from scientists like Woodwell that climate models predicted average outcomes, not a wide range, let alone such a range’s probabilities, even though a wide range of outcomes was possible. They knew that the models were estimated from a period with a docile climate and thus couldn’t foresee extreme outcomes. Additionally, the economists used estimates of economic activity from the short history of industrialized economies, especially post-WWII, during which growth had been smooth and ever-rising. In other words, both the economic and the climate models were calibrated over a single time frame when nothing bad happened. As a result, neither could

predict bad, drastic changes. Woodwell warned that this was the essential feature of the problem: really bad things could happen. Schelling and Nordhaus, however, dealt with this problem by shrugging or distracting. Here is Schelling’s next paragraph:

Suppose the kind of climate change expected between now [at the turn of the 21st century] and, say, 2080 had already taken place, since 1900. Ask a seventyfive-year-old farm couple living on the same farm where they were born: would the change in the climate be among the most dramatic changes in either their farming or their lifestyle? The answer most likely would be no. Changes from horses to tractors and from kerosene to electricity would be much more important. This little thought experiment is a clever bit of misdirection, but let’s go with it. Since so much of America’s most valuable produce is grown in California, let’s consider asking a hypothetical farmer there for the most dramatic changes in life given what scientists can tell us is likely by 2080. A foreseeable answer might go something like this: “Well, we began farming here because the steady snowmelt from the Sierra Nevadas provided perfect irrigation, but since the winters got shorter, the rains more intense, the droughts longer, and the mountain tops ice-free, we dug one well after another for irrigation, but that’s running out too. We have had to deal with one crisis after another, so insurance is sky high. We have a pretty big mortgage, but with collapsing property values, we can’t sell and are likely to declare bankruptcy. Oh, we also have tractors and electricity now.” But even if farmers and farming suffer dramatically, Schelling and Nordhaus’s models don’t care. They measure dollars of output, and agriculture had become cheap during the boring decades. Schelling continues:

Today, little of our gross domestic product is produced outdoors, and therefore, little is susceptible to climate. Agriculture and forestry are less than 3 percent of total output, and little else is much affected. Even if agricultural productivity declined by a third over the next half-century, the per capita GNP we might have achieved by 2050 we would still achieve in 2051. Even if the climate severely damages crops, we will not notice the difference, just wait a year. But surely there must be other arguments for doing something. Schelling has answers for all of them. [An] argument is that our natural environment may be severely damaged. This is the crux of the political debate over the greenhouse effect, but it is an issue that no one really understands. It is difficult to know how to value what is at risk, and difficult even to know just what is at risk. The benefits of slowing climate change by some particular amount are even more uncertain.

This is the second essential failure of this work. Schelling and Nordhaus repeatedly say, in a variety of ways, “If we can’t measure it…” and just move on. What I haven’t read in their work is the second half of the implied logic: “then we should assume it is worth exactly zero.” Neither Schelling in his verbal arguments, nor Nordhaus in his precise models ever gives damaging the environment any value. To have any value at all, something must have dollars closely associated with it. I understand why this is a constraint on a model, but the spokespeople for those models should say that the estimates in the model are biased to be low because of what we know they leave out. For example, knowledge that we might leave future generations a hot, unstable world is worth exactly zero in the models, but that truth has a psychological cost that will rise.

KNOWLEDGE THAT WE MIGHT LEAVE FUTURE GENERATIONS A HOT, UNSTABLE WORLD IS WORTH EXACTLY ZERO IN THE MODELS OF SCHELLING AND NORDHAUS, BUT THAT TRUTH HAS A PSYCHOLOGICAL COST THAT WILL RISE.

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GUEST ESSAY

A third argument is that the conclusion I reported earlier—that climates will change slowly and not much—may be wrong. The models do not produce surprises. The possibility has to be considered that some atmospheric or oceanic circulatory systems may flip to alternative equilibria, producing regional changes that are sudden and extreme. A currently discussed possibility is in the way oceans behave. If the gulf stream flipped into a new pattern, the climatic consequences might be sudden and severe. Is 2 percent of GNP forever, to postpone the doubling of carbon in the atmosphere, a big number or a small one? That depends on what the comparison is. A better question—assuming we were prepared to spend 2 percent of GNP to reduce the damage from climate change—is whether we might find better uses for the money. The answer, every time, is that there must be better uses for the money, because we can’t figure out what reducing the damage would be worth. He offers 2 percent of GNP forever as his straw man, but what about 1 percent? 0.5 percent? If society had started spending any meaningful amount on this problem when Woodwell and others were teaching the policy makers about the future, we would likely be in a very different situation today. Economists advocated for spending close to zero and repeatedly said that waiting wasn’t costly. Zero is what we got. I believe it is difficult to overstate how important Nordhaus and Schelling’s intellectual and computational work has been in shaping society’s response to climate change. WHRC asked me to write an essay for their magazine and probably didn’t want me to copy and paste from encyclopedias, congressional reports, and academic papers or go over a past about which we can do nothing. Yet 14

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I think it’s important to understand what is in the models that most people use, and think about what we can do better, both when using models and when considering who our audience should be. What I will now offer is a clear, economics-grounded critique of Nordhaus and Schelling that we can actually do something about.

The models Nordhaus built, and continues to update, are difficult and complicated. They have many variables, estimates, and equations. Such models are typically very hard to solve without simplifying assumptions. Here are some of the assumptions:

• Most global models aggregate all countries together into one homogenous economy. • There is no migration between countries. • Output is measured, not wealth. • Nature has no inherent value.

• There is literally no possibility of a discontinuity. The models can only produce smooth paths. • There is no uncertainty. As a result, there are no ranges of outcomes.

• Ever-increasing riches is the baseline assumption. Future generations will be immensely rich in unimagined (but precisely forecast) ways, and anything we do to slow progress now will limit their future incomes.

To some readers this list will be wellknown and received with a shrug. To others it will seem outlandish. I have spent time with the history of these and many other models and am unfazed by them. They do something, and that something can be useful when considering some kinds of questions, but not many. (Indeed, by the 1990s, most research was moving away from such big models because they weren’t very helpful. Economists focused instead on narrow modeling of

IF SOCIETY HAD STARTED SPENDING ANY MEANINGFUL AMOUNT ON THIS PROBLEM WHEN WOODWELL AND OTHERS WERE TEACHING THE POLICY MAKERS ABOUT THE FUTURE, WE WOULD LIKELY BE IN A VERY DIFFERENT SITUATION TODAY.

Central Greenland Temperature (C) -50,000 YRS

How should we value the non-trivial and rising probability that very big, very bad changes happen? If we assign a 10% chance to billions of people starving and wars in virtually every part of the globe over scarce resources, shouldn’t we be willing to pay a high price now? If you were told that you had a choice to play Russian Roulette with our hospitable planet, would you fuss over exactly how many chambers the gun had? The models say that a gun with one bullet is the same as a gun with none because the most likely outcome in both cases is survival.

Under what circumstances do we think that massive migration might be triggered? Schelling, who often sees the world as a negotiation, says it’s hard to imagine rich countries actually caring enough about the poor, tropical, and desert countries to do anything. Plus, other economic models predict that rich countries will be even better off because of climate change since places like Scandinavia and New England will be warmer. Residents of hot places are likely to suffer, but in all economic models the unfortunate sit there and take it. Is that realistic? If not, what price should we assign to preventing mass migration? Will Sweden really have a 29% boost to GDP from warmer weather when tens or hundreds of millions of migrants are coming from the Middle East and Africa?

What about Florida, Arizona, and Texas? Tens of millions of people live in these states, and many of them left places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to have a more pleasant climate. Will the climate make hot, wet, southern places unlivable, and

-20,000 YRS

-10,000 YRS

1900 A.D.

-20 -25 -30

Temperature

narrow problems, often called Applied Microeconomics.) The questions they cannot answer are among the most essential to considering climate change. Here are a few key questions Nordhaus doesn’t and Schelling didn’t answer (Schelling died in 2016 at age 95):

Time

-40,000 YRS

-35 -40 -45 -50 -55 -60

A stable climate allows humans to multiply and settle. The record over time of Greenland’s ice core temperature fluctuation and stabilization is indicative of the gobal stabilization of temperatures within the last 10,000 years. // data: Alley, R.B. 2004. GISP2 Ice Core Temperature and Accumulation Data. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series #2004-013. NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA. perhaps uninsurable? When will banks stop offering 30-year mortgages in coastal properties? Will the owners of those homes be compensated? If they are owed compensation, who should pay it? People who did not move to risky climates? Note that the people moving north (or into South Africa, the only temperate country in Africa) will not be “refugees” but “migrants” as they will be looking for a new place to live. Schelling casually argues in a number of places that whole societies have moved or been nomadic before, so that’s nothing new. I have bad news for people who find solace in such lazy economic thinking. Economic history tells us unambiguously that lasting wealth only happens through investment in institutions, people, and structures, all of which depend on big groups of people staying in place and sharing long periods of stability, good

civic norms, and clear, well-enforced property rights. Nomads had only the wealth they could carry and did not have smooth, rising incomes. Nomads have neither libraries nor laboratories. They lived in small numbers in vast areas with few other people. As Woodwell noted in 1988, civilization was built on stable climates.

Is a nice day really worthless? Not long ago I went to see a former classmate who is now a well-known professor of economics at MIT. I told him that I was dedicating myself to climate change. “Why?” he asked, truly puzzled. I told him I had started working on it and found the topic fascinating, beautiful, tractable, and absolutely urgent. “Why aren’t you interested?” I asked him. He said that it didn’t seem like a big deal, some things might get better, others would get worse, that the science had a lot of uncertainty… I Winter 2019

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GUEST ESSAY

WE CAN SHARE OUR WORK WITH DIFFERENT AUDIENCES, INCLUDING THE FINANCIAL COMMUNITY. INVESTORS ASSESS THE FUTURE, AND IF AN ASSET HAS A 10% RISK OF CATASTROPHE IT IS NOT CONSIDERED TO BE IDENTICAL TO AN ASSET WITH ZERO RISK OF CATASTROPHE.

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then asked him if he didn’t worry about leaving an unhealthy, dangerous planet to his children. His answer should make Nordhaus proud, “We are leaving them the entire stock of human knowledge. It’s a gift they didn’t do anything for. So what if we leave them a bit less of something else like climate?”

This is an essential component of economic arguments: all forms of consumption and wealth are fungible. Any loss in one part of life can be compensated for in other parts of life. And since Nordhaus’s models tell us that economic processes will make people in the future fabulously rich beyond our wildest dreams, any deterioration in the climate will be easy to compensate for. It will simply be a number 2 pencil’s width away since it’s actually almost worthless. I have a strong suspicion this is untrue, that when told that their children will only recreate indoors, parents will care. When told that their parents are leaving them the entire stock of human knowledge to enjoy indoors but a hot, unstable climate with the attendant unease and political risks, the children won’t see those two things as fungible or compensatory.

Do I have a more precise estimate of the value of the loss of a nice day, or of beauty, or of snow than Nordhaus’s zero? No, but I am sure it is a positive number and, importantly, society has other methods of signaling what’s important besides money. Economists may scoff at this, but non-monetary values like abortion rights, civic freedom, access to health care, and symbols like songs and flags are all worth exactly zero in economic models, yet they inflame spirits and spur action. I have spent several years asking people of all walks of life to describe how they think the world will actually be different in 30 years. None of them has been close. I live in Boston and when I tell them that they should expect temperatures to

be over 90(F) for a full month by midcentury, and that if we don’t change the trajectory of carbon emissions, by late in the century almost the entire summer will be over 90 degrees, they are shocked. I am reminded of an ad I saw online last fall. I was doing so much research on Texas that a website I was visiting identified me as being in Austin and being interested in nature. The ad was from an outdoors store and said, “Hey Austin! It’s November, time to go outside again!” I don’t know what form advertising will take in 50 years, but if we don’t change the path of emissions, that ad will be useful in Massachusetts. I can’t imagine what the ads in Texas will say, but there probably won’t be as many customers for them. Might climate change actually be much more costly in the developed world than elsewhere? This essay is not a referendum on Galbraith vs Nordhaus, but it is interesting to me that Nordhaus’s work is about the smooth flow of history, while Galbraith’s The Great Crash, 1929 is one of the best books about the Great Depression. Financial crisis almost always has two ingredients: high expectations for the future, and a lot of debt. If an entire society assumes the future will be smooth and prosperous, it borrows. If it has sophisticated financiers, it borrows a lot. This is where we are in the developed world: Nordhauslike models underlie the market’s financial assumptions, including things like municipal bonds for longlived infrastructure in states like Florida. What will happen when those assumptions are proven too rosy? Will the adjustment be gradual? It hasn’t been in the past. The above questions are now tractable. Advances in downscaling of climate models allows more accurate assessments of regional and local climates. The variety of available models allows a probabilistic assessment

same title that George Woodwell did in 1988, also gave testimony on Capitol Hill. Phil was on a three-person panel and did an excellent job helping the Congressional committee understand the urgency and challenges we face. The second member of the panel was a man from a think tank who made one point over and over: yes, it’s happening, but do not heed alarming forecasts as our ever-growing wealth will insulate us from bad outcomes.

WHRC President Phil Duffy, right, and Ted Nordaus, center, testified on climate change to the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology in May 2018. // image courtesy House Science Committee of future local climates. Progress in understanding the likelihood of discontinuous changes can offer us better estimates, even if they are wide and contain a lot of uncertainty. At the end of my graduate school, I was offered academic jobs but also looked for non-academic ones and, to my advisors’ dismay, took one in an investment firm. After a short time there, I understood the two things I hadn’t liked about academia. First, it divided the world into slivers where experts could work. For example, once Nordhaus claimed climate territory, few economists entered or were visible. Second, academic work is purely about the past. Finance has plenty of flaws, but, like all decision-making fields, it is about the future. The past can sometimes be nailed down precisely, but the future is uncertain. There are no 95% confidence intervals in the future. I have spent the last 20 years working on the future and thinking about how to approach it. We can do much better than Nordhaus by using probabilities, by disaggregating the world and assessing risks across space, by making vivid the aspects of our probable futures that are hard to value but are not worth

zero, and by considering the sad, bad consequences of climate change clearly and openly, both the ones that will be impossible to avoid and the ones that we can avoid if we act. We can share our work with different audiences, including the financial community. Investors assess the future, and if an asset has a 10% risk of catastrophe it is not considered to be identical to an asset with zero risk of catastrophe. In Nordhaus’s models insurance is worthless. In the real world, insurance is bigger than the stock markets and bond markets, but for many people it may not be available before long. I hope this gives you a sense of the work I think I can help WHRC produce. All of it is grounded in science and is in the same spirit with which George Woodwell founded WHRC. It may be a bit more combative and, because we have so much less time to change paths, more urgent, but by trying to find new avenues of influence, perhaps we can offer the future a better range of probable outcomes. Early in this essay I said that the Nordhaus family and WHRC have an oddly bookended relationship. In May Phil Duffy, who currently holds the

The third panelist was Ted Nordhaus, Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Breakthrough Institute, and nephew of William. He also recognized the changes in the climate to come. This was a potentially seminal moment: all of the panelists at a Congressional hearing on climate change agreed about the science. Perhaps they could work together to send a message. It turned out to be impossible. You see, Ted is the author of The Death of Environmentalism and a founder of what he calls ecomodernism or eco-pragmatism. A professional pollster and strategist, he first made a splash by saying that the environmental movement was failing. He and his institute see a need to embrace growth and put our energies into making the world great through building wealth so we can adapt and protect humanity from the coming changes and focusing on developing new sources of clean energy. He sees 2°C as an impossible target and has embraced that: we will have to redefine nature and master it, not be held back by the idea of physical limits. Phil Duffy kept coming back to the need to levy a carbon tax to change the incentives for energy use, a policy even William Nordhaus has promoted since the 1980s. Surely, the panelists could agree on some price. Ted Nordhaus, however, sees any carbon tax as too risky given the riches to come. The market invented the number 2 pencil, surely it can invent much more. Winter 2019

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Interview with Rafe Pomerance

An insider look at the NYT Magazine climate issue by Dave McGlinchey

In August 2018, The New York Times Magazine dedicated an entire issue to one article focusing on climate change as an emerging political issue between 1979 and 1989. “Losing Earth” was launched with an event and panel discussion in New York City, featuring author Nathaniel Rich and climate scientist Dr. James Hansen. At the center of the article and the panel, however, was Rafe Pomerance.

Read “Losing Earth” online at: https://nyti.ms/2vwsgAj

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Pomerance was one of the first people to sound the alarm over climate change on Capitol Hill. He continues his work today as a senior policy fellow at the Woods Hole Research Center. WHRC interviewed Rafe about his starring role in the magazine article, and about his career fighting climate change.

WHRC: What has the reaction been to the article? RAFE POMERANCE: A lot of people were surprised by this retrospective. They didn’t know that we knew so much in 1979. They were moved. Otherwise, I have received very positive feedback and congratulations for the good work. Friends and colleagues weighing in, saying it was a good piece. WHRC: As you read it, what do you think were the most important points of the article?

POMERANCE: At the time I began, no one knew anything about the problem. They hadn’t heard of it. There was no knowledge except for a small corner of the scientific community. We had to educate policymakers who had no familiarity. And the most important point of the article was the failure of these institutions to respond.

The second thing is that [solving] climate change is a big job. We know that we need to shift from a carbon-based economy to a carbon-free economy and that’s the largest task we have ever taken on. We could have been on our way but you had this disinformation campaign that was designed to seed doubt – to undermine the scientific consensus. That has had a deleterious result. I call it the denialist disease. WHRC: You had numerous conversations with the writer, Nathaniel Rich, to share your story. Tell us about the process of developing this article. POMERANCE: The conversations took place over a year and a half—something on that order. I didn’t know how the piece was going to shape up. I talked to Nathaniel many, many times. Sometimes about the same conversation or event. He was trying to get the sequence right. And then the way he put it together was excellent.

I was so impressed by his research. We would talk, and he would come back having turned up transcripts and events that I had forgotten about. I didn’t remember every detail, and he would remind me based on a transcript. He had over 100 interviews. In the end, he did something that hadn’t been done before. He told a story that hadn’t been told.

His depiction of the Charney Committee (a federal research group assembled in 1979 to study carbon dioxide and climate change) meeting in Woods Hole was amazing.

There are two schools of thought about the article. The first is, they are amazed by how much we knew back then. They’re taken in by the story, and they could read the whole thing because Nathaniel is such a good writer.

The second school of thought is that he downplayed the campaign of disinformation. These are critiques around the edges. My dominant feeling was that this piece really generated an enormous amount of attention and interest.

WHRC: George Woodwell, who founded WHRC, was mentioned several times in the article. Rich wrote that Woodwell “had been calling for major climate policy as early as the mid-1970s, and an international effort coordinated by the United Nations.” POMERANCE: I was really glad to see that George was mentioned and his insights were included. He played an absolutely crucial role in identifying the role of forests and natural systems in the carbon cycle. He was the voice for that issue. He was on the second panel in the (1986 Sen. John) Chafee hearing. We fought to get him a spot and he did a great job.

I thought that the article could also have focused more attention on the central role played by Gus Speth—when he was at the White House’s Council for Environmental Quality and at CEQ and the World Resources Institute. WHRC: Looking back, reading the article, and seeing where we are today, do you feel frustrated? Or, was it all worth it?

POMERANCE: Oh, absolutely. Every bit of effort was worth it. I knew very early that this would become a dominating issue on the planet. We started out and nobody knew anything about it and now everyone does. Was it worth it? Absolutely. WHRC: What is the way forward?

POMERANCE: Organizing in states that are being affected by impacts that are clearly attributable to climate change. Like sea level rise. In 2018 we saw a Republican in Florida sponsoring a carbon tax bill. It requires a massive organizing effort in states based on impact. The question is whether climate change and its impacts can play an important role in purple states. North Carolina. Florida. Texas even. Impacts are showing up. The question is whether these impacts are important enough that they become political issues in campaigns. WHRC: What has changed since you started working on this issue? POMERANCE: It was clear then—but it’s absolutely clear now— that we have to get this done. We have to decarbonize. I’m more convinced than ever.

It requires a massive response. What the story tells is that then it was a prediction and now we are observing the reality. And the forecasts are only harsher. The challenge is scale, urgency and timing. But we need a global push, and as soon as possible.

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Precipitation Change 2070-2099 from 1061-1990 (mm/yr) <-450 Less

0 No Change

>+450 More

Precipitation The Climate Source portal allows users to explore the historical and projected climate of the entire Amazon. As seen above, dramatic changes in rainfall are predicted for the Amazon by the end of the century (under a high CO2 concentration scenario). Over the next 80 years, precipitation in the eastern Amazon is projected to fall sharply, while in the western Amazon it is expected to increase significantly.

Dry Season Length Change 2070-2099 from 1961-1990 (Months) -8 Shorter

0 No Change

8 Longer

Dry Season Length The dry season is projected to last considerably longer by the end of the century across most of the Amazon—as much as 7 months in some locations (dark red). Only a few places are predicted to have a decrease in dry season length (light blue).

Main map layering drawn from several sources, with reserve outlines provided by RAISG at amazoniasocioambiental.org/en; climate maps derived from IPCC climate projections, as calculated by Research Associate Dr. Andrea Castanho from historical and projected levels for the year 2100 under IPCC’s RCP 8.5 scenario; biomass map from Senior Scientist Dr. Alessandro Baccini, et. al. and hosted at carbonsource.org; cartography by Research Associate Paul Lefebvre. Temperature Change 2070-2099 from 1961-1990 (°C) <-5 Colder

0 No Change

>+5 Warmer

Temperature Most areas of the Amazon have already warmed, but the average temperature will continue to rise throughout the region in the coming decades. Temperatures in the southeastern Amazon Basin—including Brazil’s Mato Grasso state—are predicted to increase by as much as 5°C in the next 80 years. 20 Canopy Winter 2019

800,000 km2

The total area deforested in the Amazon to date. This is greater than the combined land area of Germany, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and the Republic of Ireland.

50 km

Nearly all (95%) deforestation in the Amazon occurs within 50 km of a road.

The Amazon Climate Source www.amazonclimatesource.org This map was developed by WHRC Research Associate Paul Lefebvre to publicize the Amazon Climate Source, a new web-based tool designed to provide the climate and forest biomass data needed to manage a changing Amazon Basin. The Amazon is home to the Earth’s largest tropical forest – an immense store of biodiversity and carbon. Human activities have already altered the landscape of this crucial region. Land speculation, cattle ranching, agriculture, mining, and other land uses have led to the deforestation (yellow) of 800,000 km2 to date. Fortunately, nearly half of the Amazon is now formally protected (dark and light green) by conservation areas and indigenous reserves. Although these protected areas have proven effective in stopping deforestation, they are vulnerable to threats outside their borders. New roads and dams, wildfires, unclear land tenure (purple), and climate change are now driving rapid changes across large swaths of the Amazon. The key to saving the Amazon lies in informed management of protected areas.

Mean Above-ground Carbon in 2003 (Mg C/ha) 0

FUNDED BY

4°C

80% of the protected area in the Amazon is predicted to have a 4°C or greater increase in temperature by 2100.

500 liters

The amount of water that one large tree in the Amazon can transfer back to the atmosphere each day.

100

150

200

Biomass Recent advances in satellite imagery and remote sensing techniques allow for the forest biomass of the Amazon to be measured from 2003 to the present. With this data, changes and trends in biomass from deforestation, degradation, and forest regrowth become clearer.

52%

The percent of Amazon forests that are currently protected by conservation areas or indigenous lands. Winter 2019

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American climate refugees are here. Government aid isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. by Connor Murphy

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Climate change is not a distant problem for the Yup’ik people on Alaska’s west coast. It’s right at their doorsteps.

As Arctic temperatures rise at twice the global rate, the tundra is not refreezing as it did in the past and permafrost—carbon-rich frozen soil—is thawing. That thawing permafrost releases greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Frozen permafrost contains nearly twice the amount of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere and runaway permafrost thaw could cause a dramatic increase to rising temperatures worldwide. But this thaw also causes a series of localized impacts that Yup’ik people call “usteq,” which translates roughly as “land collapse.”

In the town of Nunapitchuk, houses need to be leveled as the ground settles, and community members say they are doing this more often than in the past. People living in the many coastal communities in the Arctic are also worried about sea level rise and increased coastal erosion resulting from loss of sea ice.

For these Americans, the evidence is clear: climate change is destroying homes, community infrastructure, and cultural resources. The damage done so far is severe enough that three villages have voted to fully resettle their communities. Relocating would make them some of the first American climate refugees. Despite this, government response has been inconsistent.

“Usteq encompasses factors that all feed back to each other,” said WHRC scientist Dr. Sue Natali. “If permafrost thaws, then the ground becomes more vulnerable to erosion, and you can have the ground collapse. This in turn makes the land more vulnerable to flooding, which further exacerbates erosion and thaw.” To help understand these changes in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Natali is working with scientists from the State of Alaska and the Alaska Institute for Justice (AIJ) to install observation systems for local community members to track coastal erosion and permafrost thaw. “These communities have been observing the hazardous effects of climate change for so long,” Natali said. “Now they are quantifying these changes, which is critical for making informed decisions and for obtaining support for much needed action.” There is, however, no government agency officially responsible for managing American climate change refugees. It is a concerning gap in government policy, with dire consequences for Americans who live near sea-level, according to Robin Bronen, head of the Alaskan Institute for Justice.

“If you look at coastal communities throughout the United States, you can see that what’s happening in Alaska is the harbinger of what’s coming,” Bronen said. “It’s critical that we start thinking of solutions.” Winter 2019

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The Alaska Institute for Justice is a non-profit that advocates for Alaskan Native communities. They help tribal communities affected by climate change by organizing meetings to discuss strategies for climate resiliency and relocation. The meetings are a helpful start, but Bronen said she often hears people talk about limited resources. “Government agencies are governed by statutes and regulations,” Bronen said. “Without those regulations saying ‘This is your work, and therefore, you can do these things,’ it makes it really hard for a government agency to step in.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is one group that Yup’ik communities petition for aid. In some circumstances, they do help. When hurricane-strength winds, which range from 74 to over 100 miles per hour, damage homes and public structures, FEMA can pay for repairs.

However, they are less helpful when the disaster is climate change. For example, FEMA says erosion is “a covered peril if it is caused by waves or currents of water exceeding their cyclical levels, which result in flooding.” This includes sudden floods, such as those experienced during hurricanes, but not erosion events that happen slowly, after water levels change due to sea-level rise. By their definition, gradual collapse of the land underneath towns like Nunapitchuk and Kwinhagak is not a disaster that FEMA is required to respond to.

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“Climate change is affecting the habitability of the places where these people live, especially when extreme weather comes in and threatens people’s lives,” Bronen said. In 2017 alone, there were 42 major storms in Alaska – many with hurricane-strength winds. One potential source of help for the people of the Arctic is the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 2016, HUD announced $1 billion in grants to assist residents of Louisiana through projects, that made their communities resilient to the effects of climate change. This included $48 million to completely resettle the coastal community of Isle De Jean Charles, whose town was threatened by sea-level rise. “I think it’s great,” Bronen said about the HUD relocation. “But, it’s one community. It’s still not a framework.”

Bronen doesn’t believe the Isle De Jean Charles project is one that HUD launched to create a precedent. A real commitment would be to make the issue of climate change resettlement an agency policy. Until then, America’s climate-endangered communities hang in a dangerous gray area.

“There are going to be more and more communities affected, and at some point people will listen,” Bronen said. “But how many people are going to have to suffer before people start to listen? This is a human rights issue that’s happening in the United States.”

CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATIONAL SECURITY

WHRC conducts research with the Department of Defense by Connor Murphy

A growing trend of forest mortality and fires in the Arctic has raised concerns from an unconventional ally of climate scientists—the United States military. As part of a new cooperative project, WHRC scientist Dr. Brendan Rogers will work with the Department of Defense to study climate risks to Alaskan military bases. Rogers says it is a unique opportunity.

“It’s a community that we don’t typically have a lot of interaction with,” Rogers said, “but they definitely understand the science and environmental changes they’re seeing.” Despite political friction over climate change, the Department of Defense has taken a pragmatic approach to preparing for its effects. A newly released Pentagon report analyzed the vulnerability of critical military facilities to climaterelated events and found more than 60 percent of the sites at risk.

The four-year project will focus on events in the Arctic that are likely to be exacerbated by climate change, such as forest fires, tree mortality, and permafrost thaw. Rogers’ team will

combine on-site fieldwork with satellite imagery to create models that project those risks into the future. In Alaska, the health of forests on military bases are a priority for the DoD because unforeseen landscape changes can disrupt military training and operations. Landscape-level understanding and forecasts of these threats will enable Defense Department land managers to make better-informed decisions and ultimately improve forest health.

Military field exercises can take several months to schedule and plan. With forest fires growing as a threat to operations, the Pentagon hopes management of at-risk areas will improve training timelines. For example, the military is particularly concerned about changes in vegetation flammability, as affected by longer and hotter growing seasons, as this directly impacts the type of training and weapons testing that can occur. Current tools to predict flammability, however, are lacking. “Another primary concern involves lands that are vulnerable to change in the nearfuture,” Rogers said. “Specifically, we’re helping the DoD to develop operational forecasting models for tree mortality and vegetation changes.”

Rogers says that unlike fires, which kill trees in hours, these mortality events

take place over many years. A cycle of droughts and pests, enhanced by a warmer climate, weaken forests for decades before dying in large groups. “Tree mortality is a big issue in northern forests because of climate change,” Rogers said. “With longer growing seasons and more pests, a lot of boreal forests experienced massive mortality events in the last 15 years.”

From a research perspective, these longer mortality events present an opportunity—longer time scales make them trackable and predictable. Rogers has developed a model that predicts this mortality. “We found out that we can detect these signals years before death using satellite remote sensing, which gives us a novel method to predict future changes,” Rogers said.

While the analysis will provide a critical scientific underpinning for decisions within the Department of Defense, the project may be useful beyond its goals for the military. Rogers says the models crafted for the Pentagon could help scientists project forest threats outside of Alaska, as well. “This could apply anywhere,” Rogers said. “We’re looking to expand this to eventually become a global effort.” Winter 2019

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ANNUAL REPORT

Board of Directors — Class of 2021 In June 2018, Woods Hole Research Center welcomed four new directors to its Board. Each brings a passion for the protection of the natural environment plus unique skills and experiences to help advance the mission of WHRC.

Diane Cécile Falconer is a Marketing Professional whose career took her from Silicon Valley’s Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) as a senior product manager to England where she worked for NTL (now Virgin Media) in cloud marketing and Exago, an incubatorstartup, in knowledge-management software. Diane is an artist who served as co-founder and President of the Great Falls Foundation for the Arts (now Arts of Great Falls) - an atelier, school and gallery in northern Virginia. In addition to the Woods Hole Research Center and climate change, Diane’s conservation interests focus upon wolf conservation and protection of biodiversity. Diane holds degrees from UC Berkeley, BA in Economics; South Australia’s University of Adelaide, Masters in Planning; and Columbia Business School, MBA in Marketing and Finance. Thomas J. (Tod) Hynes III is the founder of XL, a leading developer and provider of fleet electrification solutions for the commercial vehicle market. Tod is also a Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he teaches a graduate course, Energy Ventures. Previously, as director of alternative energy at Citizens Energy, Tod launched the company’s wind development business. Prior to Citizens Energy, Tod founded a consulting and engineering company in distributed power generation. He also co-founded and is on the Board of the MIT Clean Energy Prize and co-chaired the Energy Committee of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Conventions (CERC), the organization that greened the 2004 U.S. presidential Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Tod holds a B.S. in Management Science from MIT.

John Le Coq is founder and CEO of Fishpond, a fly-fishing/ outdoor recreation products company based in Colorado. His vision was to build premium quality fishing and outdoor gear, while using profits and shared passions of their dedicated consumers to support water, fish, and habitat conservation efforts. John has also been an active advertising and commercial photographer, working on assignments in 72 countries for some of the world’s leading corporations and magazines. In 2016, John was recognized for his commitment and contributions to the environment as one of four nominees for the annual Pegasus Foundation Wings award. William Pisano is Vice President Emeritus, MWH Global, part of Stantec. He is an engineer who has specialized in Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) and wet weather sewerage systems technology and control for over 35 years. He has authored and presented over 130 technical papers in the area of urban runoff flooding and pollution control. Through his work he has overseen more than 80 infrastructure projects in greater Boston and had significant roles in all Boston Harbor sewage treatment projects. In 2009, Bill was awarded the Stephen D. Bechtel ASCE National Pipeline award for innovative infrastructure technological achievements. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard in Environmental Systems Engineering. 26

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| The President’s Council The President’s Council is a nongoverning group of loyal friends who contribute their time and expertise to provide advice and counsel to the Center’s President and staff on a variety of strategic, programmatic, and managerial topics. We thank them for their support. Warren Adams Boston and Edgartown, MA Spencer Adler New York, NY

Steve Bernier Vineyard Haven, MA Jim Cabot Boston, MA

Alan Greenglass, MD Newark, DE N. Stuart Harris, MD Boston, MA Berl Hartman Cambridge, MA

John Harwood Westport, MA and Washington, DC David Hoover Plymouth, MA

Amelia Koch Boston and Dartmouth, MA Kathy Kretman Washington, DC

Pamela Murphy Chevy Chase, MD

Theodore Roosevelt V Menlo Park, CA Kate Schafer San Jose, CA

Peter Stein Hanover, NH

Rob Stenson Falmouth, MA Eric Stoermer Falmouth, MA Daniel Webb Falmouth, MA

Bonni Widdoes Boston amd Edgartown, MA Stash Wislocki Telluride, CO

Zaurie Zimmerman Lexington, MA

Board of Directors Chair William R. Moomaw Professor Emeritus, Tufts University, Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy Vice Chair Georgia C. Nassikas Artist, Conservationist

Treasurer Michael J. Fanger President, Eastern Funding, LLC

Clerk R.J. Lyman Member, Mintz Levin Senior Advisor, ML Strategies Members Heather P. Campion Managing Director, Koya Leadership Partners

Stephen T. Curwood Executive Producer & Host, Living on Earth, Public Radio International, and Professor, School for the Environment, University of Massachusetts Boston Philip B. Duffy President & Executive Director, WHRC

Staff

President and Executive Director Philip B. Duffy, Ph.D.

Diane C. Falconer Environmentalist, Marketing Professional, and Artist Scott J. Goetz Professor, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, Northern Arizona University

Joshua R. Goldberg General Counsel & Managing Director, Financo, Inc. Marc E. Goldberg Co-Founder and Managing Partner, BioVentures Investors

David G. Hawkins Director, Climate Center, Natural Resources Defense Council

Thomas J. Hynes III Founder & CEO, XL Hybrids

John L. Le Coq Founder & CEO, Fishpond, Inc. Thomas E. Lovejoy Senior Fellow, United Nations Foundation, and Professor, College of Science, George Mason University

I. Foster Brown, Ph.D. Glenn K. Bush, Ph.D. AndrĂŠa D. Castanho, Ph.D. John M.A. Clark, M.Sc. Deputy Director Michael T. Coe, Ph.D. Robert Max Holmes, Ph.D. Sol Cooperdock, M.S. Vice President, G. Ken Creighton, Ph.D. Strategy & Advancement Shree Dangal, Ph.D. Alison M. Smart, B.F.A. Linda A. Deegan, Ph.D. Senior Advisor to the Mary Farina, M.A. President Gregory J. Fiske, M.S. John P. Holdren, Ph.D. Melissa Flores, B.A. Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Francis, Ph.D. Camille M. Romano, M.S., C.P.A. Spencer Glendon, Ph.D. Heidi E. Golden, Ph.D. Science Staff Seth Gorelik, M.S. Alessandro Baccini, Ph.D. Richard A. Houghton, Ph.D. Richard Birdsey, Ph.D. Leah Birch, Ph.D. Wendy Kingerlee, B.S. Paulo Brando, Ph.D. Nolan Kitts, B.S.

Victoria H. Lowell Community Leader, Conservationist

Merloyd L. Ludington Publisher & Editor, Merloyd Lawrence Books

Wilhelm M. Merck Managing Member, Essex Timber Company, and Trustee and Treasurer, Merck Family Fund Joseph J. Mueller Founder, Rockport Mortgage Corporation

Jeremy M. Oppenheim Founder & Managing Partner, SystemiQ William C. Pisano Vice President Emeritus, MWH Global, part of Stantec Amy H. Regan President, Harbourton Foundation

Joseph R. Robinson Managing Director, MidMark Capital Constance R. Roosevelt Conservationist

Paul A. Lefebvre, M.A. Sarah Ludwig, M.S. Marcia N. Macedo, Ph.D. Christina Minions, B.Sc. Susan M. Natali, Ph.D. Christopher Neill, Ph.D. Rafe Pomerance, B.A. Amanda E.W. Poston, B.A. Stefano Potter, M.S. Ludmila Rattis, Ph.D. Brendan M. Rogers, Ph.D. Jonathan Sanderman, Ph.D. Kathleen Savage, M.Sc. Christopher R. Schwalm, Ph.D. Lindsay G. Scott, M.S. Tatiana Shestakova, Ph.D. Hillary L. Sullivan, M.S. Anya Suslova, M.Sc. Wayne S. Walker, Ph.D.

Tedd R. Saunders President, Eco-Logical Solutions, and Chief Sustainability Officer, The Saunders Hotel Group

Stephanie N. Tomasky Independent Film Producer, Director, and Writer Honorary Directors John H. Adams Anita W. Brewer-SiljehĂ¸lm Neal A. Brown John Cantlon Iris Fanger Stuart Goode Joel Horn Lily Rice Hsia Lawrence S. Huntington Karen C. Lambert Mary Louise Montgomery Gilman Ordway Gordon Russell Ross Sandler J. Gustave Speth Robert G. Stanton M.S. Swaminathan Founder George M. Woodwell

Jennifer D. Watts, Ph.D. Zachary Zobel, Ph.D.

Administrative Staff Elizabeth H. Bagley, B.A. Tracy Barquinero, M.S. Paula C. Beckerle, B.A. Kelly Benway, B.B.A. Beth Brazil, M.A. Florence Carlowicz, B.A. Amy Chadburn, B.A. Shauna Conley, B.S. Annalisa Eisen Michael Ernst, M.F.A. Miles Grant, B.S. Emily Marshall, B.B.A. David McGlinchey, J.D. Fred Palmer Cathy Smith, M.Ed. Melissa Thomlinson, M.B.A. Julianne Waite, B.A. Winter 2019

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ANNUAL REPORT

Statement of Activities

2017/2018 Report

Support and Revenue

Expenses Individuals and Foundations (60.6%) Other Income (4.7%)

US Government (34.8%)

Research Programs (70.3%)

Development & Fundraising (8.0%) General & Administrative (21.7%)

Support and revenue

Contributions, grants, and contracts U.S. Government Foundations and other Investment income Donated equipment In-kind donations Change in value of split-interest agreements Other income Net assets released from restrictions

Total support and revenue

Expenses

Research programs General and administrative Development and fundraising Total expenses

Change in net assets Net assets

Beginning of year End of year

Without Donor Restrictions

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Winter 2019

With Donor Restrictions Perpetual

Total 2018

Total 2017

2,200 -

$ 4,323,656 7,529,685 436,050 23,007 35,000 (11,777) 96,491 -

$ 4,454,889 5,793,283 772,742 118,444 7,348 34,558 38,336 -

7,065,618 2,177,218 801,050

6,223,569 1,935,417 661,905

2,388,226

2,398,709

Temporarily

3,639,632 118,672 23,007 35,000 (11,777) 96,491 7,151,503

$ 4,323,656 3,887,853 317,378 (7,151,503)

7,065,618 2,177,218 801,050

1,008,642

8,086,033

11,052,528

10,043,886

$ 9,094,675

1,377,384

2,200

12,432,112

1,377,384

2,200

10,043,886

3,755,193

3,691,179

15,532,405

$ 5,132,577

$ 3,693,379

$ 17,920,631

11,219,600

8,820,891

13,133,696

$ 15,532,405

Statement of Financial Position Fiscal Year 2018 Highlights

WHRC finished FY2018 in a strong position for the second year in a row, led again by robust fundraising on all fronts. The fiscal year closed with the Woods Hole Research Center receiving another unmodified audit opinion with no findings or questioned costs from the external audit firm of Calibre CPA Group, an accomplishment that allows current and prospective funders to be confident that their donations are being spent appropriately.

The Centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Financial Position is continuing to strengthen: our Net Assets without Donor Restrictions and Total Net Assets increased by $1.0M and $2.4M respectively, and our Liabilities remained stable. New funding from foundations and relatively stable government funding kept our scientists busy: Research programs revenue and spending increased by $0.8M or 13 percent, and Contributions Without Donor Restrictions increased by 23%.

2017/2018 Report

Assets

Current Assets Cash and cash equivalents U.S. Government contributions receivable Other contributions, grants, contracts receivable Prepaid expenses and other receivables

2018

$ 3,955,768 502,639 1,797,351 160,646

$ 3,528,261 641,438 1,316,391 254,459

Investments Endowment and quasi-endowment investments Other investments

6,661,208 1,275,804

5,253,923 1,200,777

Net property and equipment

5,390,292

Total current assets

6,416,404

Total other assets Total assets

Liabilities and Net Assets

Current liabilities Accounts payable Accrued expenses Liability under charitable gift annuities Refundable advances Loan payable Total current liabilities

Long-term liabilities Liability under charitable gift annuities, net of current portion Loans payable, net of current portion Total liabilities

Full financial statements are available at: whrc.org/financials

897,500

253,660

370,583 387,987 10,949 364,702 114,192

357,365 419,004 7,954 30,719 289,192

1,248,413

1,104,234

90,046 1,382,118

77,715 1,497,449

2,720,577

Total net assets with donor restrictions

8,825,956

Total liabilities and net assets

25,000 212,651 16,009

$ 18,211,803

9,094,675

Total net assets

5,762,894

$ 20,641,208

Total net assests without donor restrictions

With donor restrictions Temporary restrictions Perpetual restrictions

6,454,700

669,971 212,651 14,878

Net assets Without donor restrictions 2,883,327 Operating 1,802,488 Board designated endowment 500,000 Board designated for Fund for Climate Solutions 3,908,860 Net investment in property and equipment

Camille M. Romano Chief Financial Officer

5,740,549

7,937,012

Total investments assets

Other assets Other contributions receivable, net of current portion Beneficial interest in real estate trust assets Bond proceeds held in trust for debt retirement

WHRC is well-positioned to move into 2019 and meet the challenges ahead.

2017

5,132,577 3,693,379 17,920,631

$ 20,641,208

Winter 2019

2,679,398

3,561,283 532,488 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 3,992,262

8,086,033

3,755,193 3,691,179 7,446,372

15,532,405

$ 18,211,803

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ANNUAL REPORT

Donors We are deeply grateful to the individuals, foundations, and businesses listed on the following pages who supported us through gifts and pledges made during the Center’s fiscal year July 1, 2017–June 30, 2018.

$100,000+

Anonymous (1) Arthur Vining Davis Foundation California Community Foundation Charles R. O’Malley Charitable Lead Trust Foundation for the Carolinas Harbourton Foundation Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation Wilhelm Merck and Nonie Brady Kristie Miller Amy and James Regan Joseph and Marité Robinson Ruth McCormick Tankersley Charitable Trust Fred and Alice Stanback

$50,000-$99,999

Anonymous (2) Spencer Glendon and Lisa Tung Christopher and Lisa Kaneb Francis and Victoria Lowell MF Bartol Charitable Giving Fund Ted and Connie Roosevelt Robert Stenson and Kate Stenson-Lunt

$25,000-$49,999

Climate and Land Use Alliance Philip Duffy and Lauren Lempert Duffy Iris and Robert Fanger Michael Fanger and Linda Sattel Ida and Robert Gordon Family Foundation, Inc. Roberta Gordon The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment David Hoover and Carol Swenson Minerva Foundation William and Rosemary Pisano Wallace Global Fund Whalesback Foundation

$10,000-$24,999

Garrett Albright ARIA Foundation Steve Bernier and Constance Messmer Clean Air Task Force Cogan Family Foundation John Cogan and Mary Cornille Combined Jewish Philanthropies Cronig’s Market Endurance Foundation Dorr Foundation Hart and Nancy Fessenden Carol R. and Avram J. Goldberg Deborah B. Goldberg Joshua R. Goldberg 30

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Winter 2019

Stuart Goode and Nancy Cooley Benjamin and Ruth Hammett Serena Hatch Horizon Foundation Lawrence and Caroline Huntington Timothy and Joan Ingraham Leona Kern William Kern and Mariye Inouye Sam and Karen Lambert Monique Liuzzi John Myers and Merloyd Ludington Katharine E. Merck William and Margot Moomaw William and Sue Morrill John and Georgia Nassikas New England Forestry Foundation Pivot Point Gordon Russell and Bettina McAdoo Trillium Asset Management James Worth

$5,000 - $9,999

Anonymous (1) Anne Fund of the Arkansas Community Foundation Matthew and Brooke Barzun Phyllis Bock Stuart and Joanna Brown Cape Cod Foundation Community Foundation of Louisville Michael and Dudley Del Balso Doe Family Foundation Robert and Cindy Doyle Scott and Diane Falconer Kim and Nancy Faulkner Michael and Elizabeth Foley Foley and Foley, LLC Dan and Bunny Gabel Timothy and Mary Helen Goldsmith Jerome and Marlene Goldstein Lisa Goldstein Gordon Thomas and Virginia Gregg Bayard and Julie Henry The Hintlian Family J. Atwood and Elizabeth Ives Ivor Cornman and Margaret E. Cornman Fund Betsy Jewett and Rick Gill Kaplan Goldstein Family Foundation Amelia Koch Philip and Catherine Korsant Bill and Noelle Locke Mattina R. Proctor Foundation Joseph and Eileen Mueller Amy and Bouke Noordzij

The Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Foundation Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc. Nancy P. and Richard K. Robbins Family Foundation Pat Riley Joanna Sturm William Lunt and Mary Waterman George and Katharine Woodwell

$1,000 - $4,999

Anonymous (2) Brian Adams and Morey Phippen Spencer Adler Robert and Alison Ament Ayco Charitable Foundation David and Nancy Babin Michael and Margherita Baldwin Rhoda Baruch Robert and Pam Beck Anthony Bernhardt Boston Financial Management John and Nancy Braitmayer Sierra Bright Elizabeth Bunnen Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank Foundation Michael and Kris Caplin Citizens Bank, N.A. Jim Clemans Climate Ride, Inc. Michael and Marcia Corrigan Vivian Donnelley Daniel Duff and Heidi Hatfield EARTHx Film Virginia Engler Edward* and Susan Epes Thomas and Diane Esselman Richard and Catherine Fay Delia Flynn Geoffrey Freeman and Marjorie Findlay Marc Goldberg and Lorri Veidenheimer Goodwin Procter LLP Jane Hallowell William and Susanne Hallstein Francis and Elizabeth Hatch George and Marina Hatch Mark and Robin Hayes Art and Eloise Hodges John and Cheryl Holdren R. Max and Gabrielle Holmes Richard and Susan Houghton Robert and Marion Howard Weston and Susanah Howland John and Lily Rice Hsia Gordon and Elizabeth Hughes Robert and Margaret Huskins

David Isenberg and Paula Blumenthal Benjamin Ives and Sarah Morrison William and Holly James Raymond and Lola Johnson Barbara Woll Jones Susan and Christopher Klem Carl and Joanne Leaman David and Dana Lee Thomas Lovejoy Laurence and Katherine Madin Marvin and Annette Lee Foundation Max and Anne Goldberg Foundation Timothy and Sandra Koch McFarren Robert McKlveen and Ellen Jones David Brown and Nawrie Meigs-Brown Charles and Mary Louise Montgomery Christopher Neill and Linda Deegan Normandie Foundation Abigail Norman Matthew Patsky Robert and Pamela Pelletreau Joan Person Eugene and Diana Pinover David and Laurie Reed Perry Ross Tedd and Ella Saunders Stanley and Barbara Schantz Bonnie Simon Richard and Joanne Spillane Peter Stein and Lisa Cashdan Gerard and Mary Swope Twin Chimney Inc. Vermont Community Foundation Nina Webber Helmut and Caroline Weymar James and Theresa Whitmore

$500 - $999

Anonymous (1) John and Patricia Adams American Endowment Foundation Don and Dee Aukamp Tim Barclay George Basch Charles and Christina Bascom The Benjamin Family George Billings Charles* and Heather Campion Jaime and Rosemary Carey Richard and Beverly Charlton Tom and Rachel Claflin Thomas and Ann Coe Mark and Theresa Cohen

Last fall, WHRC joined officials from Tufts University and the Ethiopian Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change in signing a memorandum to help that country reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and ultimately meet its Paris Agreement goals. Dr. Kelly Gallagher, director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Tufts, orchestrated the partnership, with WHRC and Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia named in the agreement as key collaborators in executing the partnership. Molly N. Cornell Lawrence and Regina DelVecchio Robert and Sylvia Dickinson Julian Draz Frank Dunau and Amy Davis Denny Emory Dorothea Endicott Christian and Kara Fay Ken Foreman and Anne Giblin Peter and Jennifer Francis Bernard Greene and Tracy Campion Charles and Ethel Hamann Samuel Hamill Peter and Karen Hargraves Stuart Harris and Malinda Polk John and Olivann Hobbie Brad and Andrea Hubbard-Nelson David and Susanna Huntington Tod and Beth Hynes Ambrose and Anna Jearld Lester* and Kathy Kretman Lawrence and Ginette Langer Weyman Lundquist and Kathryn Taylor Sheila Manischewitz Kai and Marion Marcucelli John and Rebecca Markley William and Kristina Matsch Jonathan and Jane Meigs Josephine Merck Michael and Annette Miller New Hampshire Charitable Foundation Elizabeth & Frank Odell Family Fund of the Community Foundation of Collier County Tom and Carol Odell John and Susan Olson

Susan Playfair Linda Polishuk Lawrence Pratt and Melinda Hall Kilaparti and Anjali Ramakrishna David Rosenbloom and Alice Richmond Elizabeth Sayman Kenneth Wharton and Katherine Schafer Wharton Foundation, Inc. Ron Schafer Damien Scott and Tessa Nichols Nancy B. Soulette South Mountain Company Foundation Lionel and Vivian Spiro Campbell Steward Alex and Landis Van Alen The Gilbert Verney Foundation Richard Verney E. Andrew Wilde Ned and Patricia Wright Peter Zika and Elizabeth Gould Ron Zweig and Christina Rawley

$1 - $499

Anonymous (7) John Abrams Donald and Barbara Abt Academy For Life Long Learning Jeanne and Levi Adams Siamak and Joan Adibi Margaret Adlum Ingrid Akerblom Carla Alani Catherine Allard Robert and Helen Alsop James and Laurie Alsup Lawrence Altman and Janet Barsy Harry and Katie Alverson

AmazonSmile Tom Anderson and Jennifer Stamp Luean Anthony Liz Argo Irene Avery Kathy Avery Denise Backus Paula Bacon George and Elizabeth Bagley Paul and Annette Bakstran Joan Balfour Karel Baloun John Banner B. Lynne Barbee John and Helen Barnes David and Laurie Barrett Marilee Bass Michele Belisle Ralph and Joyce Berger Howard and Deborah Bernstein Lee James Best, Jr. Kathleen Biggins James Blechman Frank and Mardi Bowles Peter Bowman Emily Bramhall David and Diana Brassard Harry Breger Charles and Helen Bresnahan David and Jennifer Brower Gerard Brown Thomas and Kathryn Brown Margaret Bruce Lois Brynes Ken Buesseler Christine Burnham David and Colleen Burt Megan Shea Burton Arch and Jessie Bush William and Helga Butler

Bradford Butman David Byrne and Rosemary Loring James Cabot Michael and Charlene Cain Alexander Campbell Kathleen Campbell John and Irene Cantlon Stephen Carey Mark and Kathleen Cariddi Robyn Carliss John and Helaine Carroll Philip and March Cavanaugh Charles and Margaret Chace Joy Chadwick Lynne Cherry Frank and Julia Child Starling and Michelle Childs Naomi Church David and Viginia Clarendon Arthur and Mary Clark Darlene Clark Peter Clark and Ellen Barol Tucker Clark Jack and Tess Clarkin Jim and Ann Cleary Bonnie Clendenning Jonathan and Susanna Cobb Ellen Coldren Peter and Edna Collom Steve Connors Dean and Cindy Conway Peter Conzett and Pam Gougen Nathaniel Coolidge Charles Cooper and Sarah Bysshe Ruth Courtnell Arthur and Mary Cox Harvey Culbert* and Louise Luckenbill Copenhaver Cumpston Dennis and Sandra Cuny Mark and Jackie Curley Jessica Dabrowski Jim Dahlem Stewart and Kathleen Dalzell Murray and Judith Danforth Sanders and Ann Davies Michael and Rona Davis Hubert and Frances de Lacvivier Paul and Maria De Weer John and Carol DeBraal Christopher DeForest and Caroline Woodwell Elyse DeGroot Leigha DelBusso Sonia DelBusso Jack Dennis John and Gail Densler Paul Destler Victoria Devlin Francis and Carol DeYoung Donald and Anita Dickinson Nicholas and Bitten Dill Leonard and Annmarie DiLorenzo Richard and Sara Dizinno Paul and Clare Dombrowski Joseph and Grace Donahue Patricia Donovan Toni Dove

Winter 2019

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Last spring, a joint appeal was signed by hundreds of Massachusetts faith leaders and scientists calling for immediate action to address climate change. The appeal marked the beginning of an ongoing effort between scientists and religious leaders seeking action on climate change in Massachusetts, while also carving out a framework for similar collaborations in other states. David D. Dow Karen Duca Martin Dugan Shirley Dunkle Allan and Linda Dunn Kristin Dupre Jon Durell William and Janet Edmond Paul and Anne Ehrlich Janine Elliott Stephen Ellis Douglas Evans and Sarah Cogan David Fanger and Martin Wechsler Jacqueline Farmer Thelma Fenster Lisa Field Philip Fine and Beverly Holley Sharon Finzer Harvey and Susan Fishman Gregory and Kim Fiske Gordon Fitzgerald Robert and Winifred Fitzpatrick Elizabeth Forrer Charles and Maryanna Foskett Elizabeth Anne Foss Judith Fox Melissa Freitag Jeremiah Friedman and Carolyn Fine Steven Friedman and Sally Sanborn Sara Fritz F. Thomas Fudala Dorothy Fulgoni A. Mark Gabriele John Galick Willard and Constance Galliart Stephen Gardner and Mary Voce Michael and MC Garfield Arthur and Linda Gelb Nancy Gibbons Susan Gibbs Irmgard Gienandt Cameron and Margaret Gifford William and Joanne Gilbrook Elizabeth Gladfelter Richard Gleeson and Nancy Serventi Scott Goetz and Nadine Laporte 32

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Winter 2019

Elaine Goldman Jonathan and Nicole Goldman Robert Goldsborough and Salley Mavor Jared and Heather Goldstone Mary Gombert Dick Goodson Marc and Carol Gordon Leon and Deborah Gove Edward Graham Greater Washington Community Foundation Alan and Elizabeth Green Huson Gregory Lorna Grenadier John and Jane Griffith Paul Grover Robert and Virginia Guaraldi Lorraine Gyauch Timothy Hagan Donald and Sheila Hailer George and Ruth Haivanis Albert and April Hamel Constance Hamilton Daniel and Caroline Hamlin Caroline Hancock Roger Hanlon Evelyn Hanson Christopher Hardee Harken Foundation Stanley and Elaine Harlow William Harris and Sada Geuss Lynn Harrison Berl Hartman John Harwood Charles and Sally Hauck David and Betsy Hawkins Elizabeth P. Heald Jill Heathman George Helmholz James and Lorna Henderer Carol Henley David and Joan Herschfeld Charlene Herzer Thomas and Mary Herzog Richard and Kristen Hill Elizabeth Hills Rod Hinkle and Kirstin Moritz

Alan and Judith Hoffman Alexander Hoffman Lynne Hogeland Larry Holt Betsey Holtzmann Wendy Holup Richard and Marjy Horton Calvin Hotchkiss Nancy Hough* Richard Hough Alan Houghton and Sky Pape Andrew Howard Nick and Mary Hubbard David and Clara Hulburt William Hull Christopher Huntington and Justine Simons Mark Hurwitz Frances Huxley Nada Hyman Thomas and Nicole Hynes Philip and Alice Isenberg Lynn Jackson Christina Jacobi D. Randolph Johnson Leonard and Patricia Johnson Virginia Johnson Alexander and Nada Jovanovic Richard Kacik Mark Kasprzyk and Camille Romano Allen Kassoff Frank and Judith Kauffman Jon and Barbara Kaufman Robert Kay Gordon and Nancy Kaye Fred and Whitney Keen Kenneth and Dana Keller Kevin and Stephanie Kennedy Jennifer Key Karen Kimber Sandra Kinet Andrew and Cheryl Kitts Lucie Kleinhans Camilla Knapp* Walter Korzec and Frances Henry Peter and Celeste Kracke Peter Kroll and Betsy Davis

Howard and Carole Kuenzler Calvin and Ilene Kunin Donna Kuroda Albert and Sonia Kutzin John and Diana Lamb Alice Lamere Patricia Lamoureux Roger and Paula Landry Marjorie Lange Lawrence and Hannah Langsam Gary LaRue and Susan Barrett Donald Law and Sara Molyneaux Chip and Gayle Lawrence Kira Lawrence and Catherine Riihimaki Sally M. Lawton John Le Coq Joan Lederman William Lehman Carolyn Leiby Edwin and Judith Leonard H. David and Patricia Leslie Melvin and Katherine Levine William and Louise Lidicker Frances Lightsom Tessa Lineaweaver Douglas and Kim Livolsi Jim and Caroline Lloyd Phillip and Whitney Long Jean Lopardo Ned Lopata Joanna Lowell Bruce Luchner Robert Luckraft and Susan Rau Mark Ludwig Allen Luke Dean Lundgren Fred and Judith Mackenzie Jane MacNeil David and Maryann Mahood Douglas B. Maitland John Malarkey and Pauline Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Leary Wayne and June Malary Charles and Susanne Mann Leon Martel John Mashey and Angela Hey Michael and Joan Mastromonaco Charles Mathias Robert Matthew Stephanie Maughan Frances Mautner-Markhof Edmund E. McCann Frances McClennen Kevin McCroary Rebecca McCue Mary A. McDonough Alice McDowell Julie McGrath Matthew McGuire Jay McLauchlan Cornelia McMurtrie Scott McNamara and Krista Hennessy David and Barbara McPhelim Nancy Mead Chris and Lorraine Mehl Maryellen Meleca and Christine Graziano Jerry and Lalise Melillo

Amy Merrill Peter and Sara Merrill Rosemary Minior Peter and Olga Mitchell Rodney and Suzanne Moll Donald and Janet Moller Elizabeth Molodovsky Allan and Maria Moniz David and Marilyn Moore Charles and Sarah Morgan Yvette Morrill Ann Morris Ken and Laura Morse Susan G. Morse Laurinda Morway Thomas and Elizabeth Moseley Day and Kathie Mount Doug Munson Kathryn J. Murphy Kathleen Murray Pierre Napert-Frenette and Jessica Small Nausett Newcomers Marcy Woodwell Neilson Vance and Marjorie Nelson Jill Neubauer Ann Little Newbury John Noel Elizabeth Norton John and Vivian Novado Carol Oakes Brien Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien and Mary Hasten George and Diane Ohanian Robert Ohlerking John and Karen Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Neil Jeff Palmer and Margot Morris Robert Paninski John and Monica Parks Fredric Parsons E. Donald and Joanne Patterson

Richard Payne and Deborah Siegal Thoru and Judith Pederson Susan Peterson Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink and Petra Ehrenbrink Suzanne Phillips Lawrence and Deborah Piccioli Thomas and Lys Pike Warren and Kathleen Pinches Jerry and Sheila Place Scott and Brandy Ann Place Christopher and Pamela Polloni Henry Pope Jerry and Barbara Porter William Porter Harriet Potter Leroy and Judi Poulson Joan Power Stevan Power Lem Powers Allan and Kit Prager Robert and Sally Prendergast Robert Prescott David Prosten and Sarah Flynn George and Kathy Putnam Elisabeth Raleigh Robert Ralls and Sherrie Burson Ronald Rauber Fred and Catherine Ravens Cary and Nancy Rea Robert and Betsy Reece Margaret Richardson Richard Riggs Mary Ring Allan Risley Alison A. Robb Mark and Laurie Robert Mimi Robins Sue Robinson

Last summer, Woods Hole Research Center hosted more than 25 students in a variety of scientific and policy focused programs. Here, a team traversed the length of the Quashnet River for water sample collections. The expedition allowed for identifying points on the river at which excess nutrients from fertilizer, along with other chemicals, were introduced to the river. // photo Connor Murphy

Rochester Area Community Foundation James and Dianne Roderick Bianca Rodriguez-Cardona Elisa Romano Jamie and Leila Rome Christopher and Roddy Roosevelt Robert Rose Marc Rosenbaum and Jill De La Hunt David and Edith Ross Nicholas Rossettos Rachel Rubin Jenny Russell Rebecca Russell Bruce Ruttenberg and Heather MacLeod Philip Sacks Richard Sailor and Mary Johnston R. Keith and Susan Salisbury Neil Sampson Ross and Alice Sandler James and Barbara Saret Murali and Jody Sastry Todd Saunders John Schade Daniel and Paula Schiller Lucy Schmeidler Paul and Kristen Schmidt Raymond Schmitt and Nancy Copley Judith Schooley Edward Schreiber John and Lois Schuyler Joel Schwartz Robert Shatten and Jessica Langsam William and Dedee Shattuck Michael and Amy Shaw Peter and Anne Sheldon Lynn Shepherd Gary and Susan Shepherd Peter and Margaret Sherin Daniel and Joanne Shively Luis and Amanda Sierra Thomas and Heidi Sikina Peter Sinclaire Vivian Sinder-Brown Jonathan Smith and Rosella Campion Robert and Sharon Smith Robert and Mary Smith Carole Smudin Wallace and Pamela Stark Gerald and Margaret Steinberg Edward and Ann Stern Tom and Judy Stetson Sarah Stewart P. and B. Stone Michael Stone Richard and Linda Stone Ronald Stone Thomas and Ann Stone John and Carolyn Stremlau Caren Sturges Maureen Sullivan Anya Suslova Peter A. Tassia and Maija M. Lutz Anne Tessier

Michael Testa The 300 Committee Land Trust, Inc. Linda Thomas Edward and Elizabeth Thorndike Pierre and Gisela Tillier Josh and Ann Tolkoff Noah and Janet Totten Bruce and Elaine Tripp Leo Tugan-Baranovsky Friends in Pennsylvania Robert and Jennifer Vander Pyl Keith von der Heydt and Terry McKee John and Jane Vose Emily V. Wade Vida and Irving Wagner Stephen and Carol Ann Wagner Grant and Jean Walker David Walker Rachel Walker Wayne and Lisa Walker Mary J. Walsh Mitzi Ware Gordon Waring and Patricia Gerrior Deborah Warner Matt Watson Scott Wayne Diana Weatherby Daniel and Mary Webb Lewis Weinfeld Jane Weingarten Irwin Weisbrot Christine Weisiger Larry Wentworth Robert and Marilyn Werner Andreas Wesserle Elizabeth Whelan Ruth B. Whipple John Whissel Terry and Olivia White Joan Wickersham Peter and Betsy Wild Thomas Wilkinson Marsden Williams Robert Williams S. Jeffress Williams and Rebecca Upton Benjamin and Ann Williamson Milton and Susan Williamson Thomas and Patricia Willis Winskill Family Fred and Susan Winthrop Marianne Wiser Joseph Wisniewski Donald Wixon and Lori Lawrence Edward and Toby Woll Eric and Sandra Wolman John and Marie Woodwell Geoffrey and Ann Woolford Deborah Yorke Richard Zajchowski and Celia Brown Louise Zawadzki Michael Zimmermann Alexander and Judith Ziss Timm and Cate Zolkos * deceased

Winter 2019

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ANNUAL REPORT Matching Gift Organizations Amgen Foundation Bright Funds Foundation Colgate Matching Gift Program FM Global Foundation J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation LPL Financial Microsoft Matching Gift Program New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc. Vanguard Charitable

George Perkins Marsh Society The Society recognizes friends who have elected to partner in the Center’s future to help sustain human prosperity and a verdant Earth for generations to come through a life income gift, annuity, life insurance policy, or bequest. The Society honors the legacy of George Perkins Marsh, who first drew attention to the idea that the real menace to nature is caused by humans themselves. Born in 1801, Marsh published the book Man and Nature in 1864, still widely considered a pivotal text in the founding of the conservationist and environmental movements.

Society members Dolores Arond Sharon Bidwell Denny Emory Iris and Robert Fanger Scott Goetz and Nadine Laporte Ben and Ruth Hammett David Hoover and Carol Swenson Frank and Judith Kauffman Charles and Mary Lou Montgomery Joan Person David and Edith Ross George and Katharine Woodwell In Memoriam Donald Bidwell Warren Felt Martin Person E. Andrew Wilde

Natalie DelBusso from Leigha DelBusso, Sonia DelBusso, and Linda Thomas

Dave McGlinchey from Kirstin Moritz and Rod Hinkle

Philip Duffy from David Brown and Nawrie Meigs Brown, and Christine Burnham

David Millar from Ruth Whipple

Bob Fanger from Michael and Annette Miller, Philip and Alice Isenberg

Joseph Mueller from Mark and Jackie Curley

Iris Fanger from David and Jennifer Brower, Alan and Elizabeth Green Iris and Bob Fanger from Leon Martel, Jonathan Smith and Rosella Campion, and Jane Weingarten Michael Fanger and Linda Sattel from Thomas and Nicole Hynes Linda Sattel from Carol and Avram Goldberg Richard and Catherine Fay from Christian and Kara Fay Joshua Goldberg from Jennifer Key

Her Grandchildren from Lorraine Gyauch

Sally and Buddy Hampton from B. Lynne Barbee

John and Cheryl Holdren from Kai and Marion Marcucelli

John Holdren from Bill and Susanne Hallstein, Pete and Vicky Lowell, Laurence and Katherine Madin, Day and Kathie Mount, and S. Jeffress Williams and Rebecca Upton Max Holmes from Kathleen Biggins, Lester* and Kathy Kretman Phebe E. Houghton from Alan Houghton and Sky Pape

Gifts In Honor Of

Lily Rice Hsia from David Byrne and Rosemary Loring, Barbara Woll Jones

John Adams from William and Sue Morrill

Kathy Kretman from Lorna Grenadier

Elizabeth Bagley from Kirstin Moritz and Rod Hinkle

George and Yara Cadwalader from Benjamin and Ann Williamson Sarah Conway from Dean and Cindy Conway Jane Curtis from Elizabeth Anne Foss 34

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Winter 2019

Chip and Gayle Lawrence from Kira Lawrence and Catherine Riihimaki Kira Lawrence from Chip and Gayle Lawrence Pete and Vicky Lowell from Elizabeth Anne Foss, Joanna Lowell Gerry Marsischky from Calvin Hotchkiss

Bill Moomaw from Melissa Freitag Zander Nassikas from Lisa Field

Mother Nature from Susan Peterson

Jerry and Sheila Place from Maryellen Meleca and Christine Graziano, Scott and Brandy Ann Place, and Deborah Yorke Sheila Place from Jerry Place

Prendergast Family from Robert and Sally Prendergast Amy Regan from Stewart and Kathleen Dalzell Layla and Jacqueline Sastry from Murali and Jody Sastry Burton Shank and Alison Whelan from Donald Wixon and Lori Lawrence

Jean Stremmel from Stephanie Maughan William Traylor from Joseph Wisniewski

David Lambert Raintree Walker from Grant Walker Grant Walker from David Lambert Raintree Walker and Rachel Denise Walker

Rachel Denise Walker from Grant Walker Allison White from Susan Gibbs, Pete and Vicky Lowell

George Woodwell from David and Nancy Babin, Timothy and Mary Helen Goldsmith * deceased

Gifts in Memory Of All Extinct Wildlife from Susan Peterson Dick Backus from Denise Backus

Clarita Heath Bright from Sierra Bright Sally Brown from Matthew and Brooke Barzun

Patricia Byrne from David Byrne and Rosemary Loring Hugh and Elizabeth Corrigan from Michael and Marcia Corrigan Joy and Donald Durrell from Jon Durell Howard F. Ellis from Stephen Ellis Edward Epes from Susan Epes Selma Fox from Judith Fox

Fred from Camilla Knapp

Hugh Gibbons from Nancy Gibbons, Vicky Lowell David T. Guernsey from Lucie Kleinhans

Ethel Rothen Hardee from Christopher Hardee Nancy and Garry Hough from Richard Hough Hugh E Huxley from Frances M. Huxley

Barbara Little from Ann Little Newbury Anthony Liuzzi from Monique Liuzzi

Martha and Stanley Livingston from Bruce Ruttenberg and Heather MacLeod William Lopardo from Jean Lopardo

Paul Morway from Laurinda Morway

Beau Oakes ‘50 Dartmouth from Carol Oakes Richard J. O’Connell from Susan Playfair

John M. Olson from John and Susan Olson

Susan Parker from Eric and Sandra Wolman

Margaret Ravens Perkins from Fred and Catherine Ravens John Chadwick Schafer from Ron Schafer

James Jackson Storrow from James and Theresa Whitmore

Science Under the Stars The second annual summer soirĂŠe to benefit climate change solutions, and the science that makes them possible, was held on August 11. More than 170 people gathered at WHRC for the summer party, which featured tours of the Center, brief talks by scientists, dinner, live jazz, an auction, and several prominent speakers, including WHRC President Phil Duffy, WHRC Founder George Woodwell, and Niskanen Center President Jerry Taylor.

Investment Counsel & Wealth Management

Proudly supports the

Woods Hole Research Center Gala Michael L. Brown, President & CEO 255 State Street, 6th Floor | Boston, MA 02109 | 617.338.8108 | www.BFMinvest.com

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TAKING CARE GOODWIN is proud to sponsor the WOODS HOLE RESEARCH CENTER and supports the Centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dedication to seeking climate change solutions and the science that makes them possible

www.goodwinlaw.com

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LEADING in the development of principles and guidelines for environmentally and socially sustainable investing

ENGAGING with dozens of companies, resulting in quantitative Green House Gas (GHG) and/or renewable energy targets

ADVOCATING for climate policy at the state and national level

PARTNERING with other leading organizations to amplify our work to fight climate change

Activating Assets for Action Since 1982

Boston, MA • San Francisco, CA • Portland, OR 800-548-5684 • www.trilliuminvest.com Winter 2019

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Supporting WHRC’s efforts for a sustainable future.

We Help Employers www.foleylawpractice.com Admitted in 20 jurisdictions nationwide

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S TAT E • ROA D

MARKET Yo u r I s l a n d G r o c e r Vineyard Haven (508) 693-4457 West Tisbury (508) 693-2234

LTHY A E H ADDITIONS Supplementing Your Healthy Lifestyle Next to Cronig’s Market Vineyard Haven Open 8:00 am-6:00 pm Monday-Saturday (508) 693-7097

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There are many ways to support climate science You don’t need to be a billionaire to make a difference. WHRC is grateful for cash donations, but there are many other ways to support our mission.

CONTRIBUTE FROM YOUR IRA TAX-FREE

FOR OUR LOCAL FRIENDS WITH “GREEN” HOMES

IRA owners over the age of 70 1/2 are able to direct their plan administrator to distribute up to $100,000 from an IRA to WHRC and other charities, tax-free. The donation counts toward your minimum required distribution, but is not included in your income for income tax purposes.

Does your solar PV system create a credit on your Eversource electric bill? You can transfer the credit to WHRC to help us keep the lights on and the computers running! Call Eversource or your PV installer and have them send you a Schedule Z, which will allow the transfer.

Donors often realize significant tax advantages by supporting WHRC via these methods. Gifts to the Center can often be doubled or tripled in size via a donor’s employer matching gift program.

Good estate planning could enable you to make a larger charitable gift than you ever thought possible. There are a variety of planned giving structures available to donors that combine your philanthropic interests with your financial needs and tax-planning strategies. By setting up one today, you can see the impact of your gift and know you made a big difference.

Visit smile.amazon.com and select WHRC as your charitable organization of choice. The products and prices are identical, but Amazon will donate 0.5% of the proceeds to WHRC when you use the Amazon Smile link.

Vehicle donations are tax deductible and benefit WHRC’s mission. It’s more than cars – you can donate trucks, boats, planes, motorcycles, RVs and heavy farm equipment too, running or not.

MAKE A GIFT OF SECURITIES OR REAL ESTATE

MATCHING GIFTS

SHOP WITH AMAZON SMILE

INCLUDE WHRC IN YOUR WILL OR ESTATE PLANS

TURN YOUR OLD GAS-GUZZLER INTO A CLIMATE CHANGE SOLUTION

To discuss any of the options above, contact Melissa Tomlinson, Director of Annual Giving at 508-444-1520 or mtomlinson@whrc.org.

// photo Alexander Nassikas

Woods Hole Research Center 149 Woods Hole Road Falmouth, MA 02540 www.whrc.org

woodsholeresearchcenter

Polaris Project 2018 The project is designed to advance research on thawing permafrostâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and related climate change issuesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;while also developing the next generation of Arctic scientists.

The 2018 team included students from colleges and universities in eight different states, from Oregon State University to Harvard, and also international students from University of Puerto Rico and Northumbria University in England. Participants developed their own research topics, and collected the necessary data in the field. After two weeks camped on the Alaskan tundra studying climate change impacts and data collection, the group returned to WHRC to analyze data and present results.

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Articles inside

A price, but at what cost?

Interview with Rafe Pomerance

Dr. Jennifer Francis joins WHRC

American climate refugees are here. Government aid isn't.

Preparing for climate change in the Amazon

WHRC conducts research with the Department of Defense