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 future of humanity.
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.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/finding-hope-in-and-for-coral/
May 11, 2021...
In late 2020, a team of marine scientists investigating Australia’s Great Barrier Reef came across a remarkable sight: a “detached coral feature that rises from the seabed to a height of nearly one-third of a mile,” reported The New York Times. It is “the first large new element of Australia’s famous reef system to be identified in more than 120 years.”
Coral is, in many ways, our environmental canary in a coal mine. Sensitive to changes in acidity, temperature, currents, and the like, these animals are early warning systems of climate change and its damage. Until the new finding, it felt like news about coral ranged from “depressing” to “even more depressing.” For example, in spring 2020, scientists reported that over half of the Great Barrier Reef’s corals had died since 1995, largely due to climate change-induced mass bleaching.
Jun 22, 2021... A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, the University of Naples Federico II, the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences has found that making food from air would be far more efficient than growing crops. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their analysis and comparison of the efficiency of growing crops (soybeans) and using a food-from-air technique.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/science-is-heeding-the-ocean-s-sos/
Jul 19, 2021...
What’s one of the first things you do when you get to the ocean? It’s probably to take a deep breath, inhaling the instantly familiar smell that inspires calm, evokes memories, and lets you know exactly where you are.
Every other breath you take is provided by the ocean, which supplies half of the entire planet’s oxygen. It is Earth’s life support system: it regulates our climate, feeds us and innumerable other species, and its health and well-being are critical to maintaining our own – yet we do not behave as though it is.
Aug 11, 2021...
Over the last 50,000 years, humans have caused the extinction of 10-20 percent of all avian species, a new study reveals.
This includes at least 469 known species of birds, though the actual figure is believed to be much higher.
The study was led by Prof. Shai Meiri of the School of Zoology and Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University, and Amir Fromm of the Weizmann Institute of Science.
May 26, 2022... REHOVOT, ISRAEL – May 26, 2022 – About 30 massive, intricate computer networks serve the scientists who stand at the forefront of climate change research. Each network runs a software program comprised of millions of lines of code. These programs are computational models that combine the myriads of physical, chemical, and biological phenomena that together form the climate of our planet. The models calculate the state of Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land, and ice, capturing past and present climate variability and using the data to predict future climate change. These results are analyzed by leading research institutes across the globe, including the Weizmann Institute of Science, and then incorporated into the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report. Policymakers rely on the IPCC report when they form adaptation and mitigation strategies for climate change, one of our generation’s greatest crises.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/video-gallery/a-sustainable-future-our-vision/
Sep 07, 2022... Researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science — with their pioneering spirit and a profound sense of urgency — are working to achieve transformational scientific breakthroughs and forge a path toward sustainability with innovative solutions to global warming, alternative energy, conservation, carbon reduction, food security, and much more.
Sep 09, 2022...
The climate crisis, its effects and ways to prepare for it will become a central topic of research, as per the Council on Higher Education's upcoming five-year program.
Israel's Council of Higher Education will for the first time allocate hundreds of millions of shekels over the next five years for research into the climate crisis and sustainability, Haaretz has learned.
The council's upcoming five-year program, the main principles of which were formulated over the past few months, represents a major step forward for Israeli climate research — an area of study extremely lacking in resources, especially compared to the enormous investments and research in these academic fields in other countries.
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