About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the benefit of humanity.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/fight-climate-change-plant-a-tree/
Mar 02, 2020...
Our new world order is particularly brutal for trees. Between climate change and economic greed, these lifegiving – and lifesaving – plants are not doing so well.
Besides well-known, large-scale devastations such as wildfires and deforestation (particularly of the Amazon, whose mighty forests are the reason the region is called – for now, anyway – the lungs of the planet), incremental changes are wreaking quieter, though no less devastating, impacts; for example, species native to the American South can no longer survive the warmer climate and so are spreading into cooler Northern climes. Behind them comes desertification.
Mar 02, 2020...
Farmers in arid areas of India need no convincing that the climate is changing under their feet. Their income is drying up along with their groundwater wells, forcing many to give up farming.
As these kinds of situations become more common, help is coming from Tel Aviv University's Nitsan Sustainable Development Lab directed by Ram Fishman, an expert on smallholder farmers and climate change.
His team assesses agriculture, water and energy problems in rural Asia and Africa and finds Israeli technologies to solve them.
Nov 27, 2019...
Scientists converted a strain of E. coli bacteria that is capable of eating carbon dioxide for energy. (Credit: Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock)
Even with growing awareness of climate change, global greenhouse gas emissions are still climbing. And, in recent years, scientists have worked to apply advances in synthetic biology — the the application of engineering principles to the study of organic life — toward some of our most pressing environmental challenges.
Nov 27, 2019... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—November 27, 2019—Bacteria in the lab of Prof. Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute of Science have not just sworn off sugar – they have stopped eating all of their normal solid food, existing instead on carbon dioxide (CO2) from their environment. That is, they were able to build all of their biomass from air. This feat, which involved nearly a decade of rational design, genetic engineering, and a sped-up version of evolution in the lab, was reported in Cell. The findings point to means of developing, in the future, carbon-neutral fuels.
Oct 31, 2019... The ocean is one of the largest and most mysterious ecosystems on Earth. In the tenth episode of Weizmann in Focus, Dave Doneson describes the fascinating research of Weizmann Profs. Ilan Koren and Assaf Vardi who set sail aboard the Tara schooner to unlock some of these mysteries. They were among a select group of scientists who traveled thousands of kilometers across all the world’s oceans to advance research and increase environmental awareness. The research conducted on board the schooner yielded hundreds of scientific papers as well as a better understanding of the ocean ecosystem and how it impacts the entire planet.
May 28, 2020...
California's giant Sequoias can live for more than 3,000 years, their trunks stretching two car lengths in diameter, their branches reaching nearly 300 feet toward the clouds. But a few years ago, amid a record drought, scientists noticed something odd. A few of these arboreal behemoths inside Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks were dying in ways no one had ever documented—from the top down.
When researchers climbed into the canopies, they discovered that cedar bark beetles had bored into a few branches. By 2019, at least 38 of the trees had died—not a large number, but “concerning because we’ve never observed this before,” says Christy Brigham, the park’s chief of resource management.
Oct 07, 2020...
Finally, some positive news about climate change: Even small groves in your backyard or city park help fight the effects of rising temperatures, drought and greenhouse gases.
“Urban orchards and green spaces can contribute to a range of ecosystem services,” writes Weizmann Institute of Science postdoctoral researcher Rafat Qubaja in a soon-to-be-published paper.
Those “services” include storing carbon, reducing air pollution, regulating the urban microclimate, cooling and shading, retaining rainwater and soil moisture, recharging groundwater and more.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/how-bushfire-smoke-traveled-around-the-world/
Mar 18, 2021... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—March 18, 2021—It’s not just how hot the fires burn – it’s also where they burn that matters. During the recent extreme fire season in Australia, which began in 2019 and burned into 2020, millions of tons of smoke particles were released into the atmosphere. Most of those particles followed a typical pattern and settled to the ground after a day or week; however, the particles created in fires burning in one area of the country managed to blanket the entire Southern Hemisphere for months. When studying particle-laden haze, two researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science noticed puzzling spikes in a certain measurement, and tracked the elevated levels to the fires in that area. Next, as reported in Science, the Israeli scientists uncovered the “perfect storm” of circumstances that swept the particles emitted from those fires into the upper atmosphere and spread them over the entire Southern Hemisphere.
Mar 18, 2021...
The 2019–20 wildfires in Australia injected huge amounts of smoke into the stratosphere, which has led to record aerosol levels over the southern hemisphere.
Ilan Koren at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and Eitan Hirsch at the Israel Institute for Biological Research analysed satellite data collected between 1981 and 2020 to look at what effect the devastating bushfire season in Australia had on aerosol concentrations in the stratosphere.
Apr 16, 2021...
While Earth Day is 51 years old this year, the Earth is 4.54 billion years old – “plus or minus about 50 million years,” says the National Geographic Society. And yet in less than 200 years, the blink of an eye, humankind has thrown a wrench into our small planet’s carefully tuned systems.
Since the Industrial Age, our remarkable advances have had a flip side: chemicals, pharmaceuticals, fossil fuels, and the like have fouled our water, land, and climate. We have increased Earth’s temperature, causing mass extinctions, stronger storms, devastating wildfires, flooding, and food shortages – consequences that will only increase. And while we can all take personal steps, there is ultimately one hope for mitigating human impacts on the planet: science.
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