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/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-june-2014/
Jun 13, 2014...
Convective clouds forming over the Amazon in a blanket of smoke. Photo credit: Prof. Ilan Koren, Weizmann Institute of Science.
Understanding how clouds affect the climate has been a difficult proposition. What controls the makeup of the low clouds that cool the atmosphere or the high ones that trap heat underneath? How does human activity change patterns of cloud formation? The research of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Prof. Ilan Koren suggests we may be nudging cloud formation in the direction of added area and height. He and his team have analyzed a unique type of cloud formation; their findings, which appeared recently in Science, indicate that in pre-industrial times, there was less cloud cover over areas of pristine ocean than today.
Apr 12, 2011... Below the Earth’s surface, water—perhaps our most precious resource—is stored in geological formations called aquifers. “It’s important to know that more than 95 percent of the Earth’s accessible freshwater is in these underground reserves. That’s water we pump from the ground and drink and use for irrigation and for industry,” says hydrologist Prof. Brian Berkowitz, Head of the Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/using-science-to-save-our-oceans/
Jul 18, 2019...
It’s the height of summer – time to hit the beach, whether for an afternoon or a week or two. People love the ocean and have always been drawn to it, but as much as it affects us, we affect it, too.
The ocean's health is crucial to the planet’s health – and ours. That’s why the devastating impacts from climate change are so concerning: as the temperatures warm, glaciers melt, and seawater becomes more acidic, as fish and mammals are overfished, the oceans are dying.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/marine-green-slime-to-save-the-planet/
Oct 03, 2012...
The expedition in the north Atlantic Ocean. Photo by Assaf Vardi
As the northern hemisphere sweltered in summer, more than 30 scientists, led by an Israeli biologist, were spending the month of June on a ship in the north Atlantic Ocean. Their mission: to find green slime. Or more specifically — blankets of phytoplankton: single-cell algae that grow in masses on the ocean’s surface. These blankets can grow to thousands of square kilometers.
Nov 13, 2017...
Five storms traveling around the south pole. Credit: NASA
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—November 13, 2017—Under global climate change, the Earth’s climatic zones will shift toward the poles. This is not just a prediction; it is a trend that has already been observed in the past decades. The dry, semi-arid regions are expanding into higher latitudes, and temperate, rainy regions are migrating poleward. In a paper that that was recently published in Nature Geoscience, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers provide new insight into this phenomenon by discovering that mid-latitude storms are steered further toward the poles in a warmer climate. Their analysis, which also revealed the physical mechanisms controlling this phenomenon, involved a unique approach that traced the progression of low-pressure weather systems both from the outside – in their movement around the globe – and the inside, analyzing the storms’ dynamics.
Dec 26, 2006... More than half of the dust needed for fertilizing the Brazilian rainforest is supplied by a valley in northern Chad, according to an international research team headed by Dr. Ilan Koren of the Institute’s Environmental Sciences and Energy Research Department. In a study published recently in Environmental Research Letters, the scientists have explained how the Bodélé valley’s unique features might be responsible for making it such a major dust provider.
Nov 15, 2017...
Shutterstock
In Greek mythology, Zeus had dominion over the creation of lightning. Thousands of years later humans have begun to assume that role. Scientists have already linked aerosol emissions to increases in lightning over areas of the Amazon prone to forest fires (pdf) as well as regions of China with thick air pollution. The clearest example yet of humanity’s influence on atmospheric electrostatic discharges, however, surfaced recently when researchers discovered dense trails of lightning in the soot-filled skies over two of the world’s busiest shipping routes in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/israel-prize-to-prof-dan-yakir/
Apr 02, 2019...
Prof. Dan Yakir
The Weizmann Institute’s Prof. Dan Yakir has won this year’s Israel Prize for Research in Geology, Earth Sciences and Atmospheric Sciences, for his groundbreaking insights into the impact of semi-arid forests on the global climate.
“At the station he founded in the Yatir Forest, Prof. Yakir explores the interactions between the biosphere and the atmosphere, especially the ways in which vegetation influences the environment and the climate,” Education Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted.
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.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/eating-air-making-fuel/
Jun 23, 2016... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—June 23, 2016—All life on the planet relies, in one way or another, on a process called carbon fixation: the ability of plants, algae, and certain bacteria to “pump” carbon dioxide (CO2) from the environment, add solar or other energy, and turn it into the sugars that are the required starting point needed for life processes. At the top of the food chain are different organisms (some of which think, mistakenly, that they are “more advanced”) that use the opposite means of survival: they eat sugars (made by photosynthetic plants and microorganisms) and then release CO2 into the atmosphere. This means of growth is called “heterotrophism.” Humans are, of course, heterotrophs in the biological sense because the food they consume originates from the carbon fixation processes of nonhuman producers.
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