The return of river herring
Every spring, river herring migrate from the ocean to freshwater rivers to spawn. Before Europeans arrived in this region, millions of fish could be seen in herring runs. But pollution, dams, and overfishing drastically reduced the number.
Over the past two decades, conservation groups, local towns, the state and Mashpee Tribal leaders have worked to restore river habitat. The herring are making a slow comeback. So much so that for the first time, people who are not members of a tribe are allowed to take herring from a run in Harwich.
A message from President & CEO Dr. R. Max Holmes
Last week, I sat on two panels at CERAWeek in Houston—the world’s premier energy conference, attended by thousands of energy executives but also several climate scientists. One panel focused on nature-based climate solutions: the management and conservation of forests, soils, and other natural systems to harness their extraordinary capacity to draw carbon out of the atmosphere and store it. That is Woodwell’s home territory, and a topic I can discuss with the confidence of decades of institutional science behind me.
The second panel was on a topic many serious climate scientists have considered almost too hot to handle: that we may need to think carefully about intentionally reflecting sunlight away from Earth to slow global warming.
Woodwell has never shied away from science that challenges comfortable assumptions. If the status quo of climate action is insufficient to meet this moment—and it is—then expanding what we are willing to seriously examine is not a departure from our mission. It is an expression of it.
Let me start with what we know. The most important things society must do to address climate change remain exactly what they have always been: slash greenhouse gas emissions, draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere (most immediately through nature-based climate solutions), and prepare communities for the disruption already baked into the system. Woodwell’s science and policy work is built on that foundation, and nothing about our consideration of solar radiation management (SRM) changes it.
But we also have to be honest with ourselves about where we are. Despite decades of warnings from climate scientists, emissions continue to rise. We are on a trajectory to blow past the Paris Agreement’s temperature targets, likely in the next few years. Our own research underscores the danger: thawing Arctic permafrost, warming feedbacks from wetlands, and the potential dieback of Amazonian rainforest could accelerate emissions in ways that overwhelm even our best efforts. In that context, responsible science demands that we examine every possible option, including ones that make us deeply uncomfortable.
Solar radiation management refers to proposed approaches that would cool the Earth by reflecting a portion of incoming sunlight back into space. The most-discussed approach, stratospheric aerosol injection, would involve releasing reflective particles into the upper atmosphere via aircraft—mimicking the temporary cooling effect of large volcanic eruptions. Research suggests that if deployed, SRM could reduce surface temperatures and potentially limit the risk of crossing dangerous climate tipping points.
To be very clear, Woodwell is not advocating for deployment. SRM would do nothing to address the root causes of climate change, nor harmful consequences of rising carbon dioxide levels like ocean acidification. It carries real and poorly understood risks, including uncertain effects on rainfall patterns, crop yields, and ecosystems. And it raises profound questions of fairness and governance: who decides, and on whose behalf, to alter the global climate system? What happens if deployment begins and then stops abruptly, triggering “termination shock,” a rapid and dangerous rebound in warming?
These are exactly the questions that responsible research needs to answer. Woodwell believes that research on SRM must tackle priority scientific and ethical questions; must be international in scope, with meaningful participation from Global South nations and Indigenous communities; and must be well-governed, with robust standards. Our concerns include the Arctic, where the stakes of rapid warming are especially dire, consideration of SRM is increasing, and governance frameworks for SRM research are lacking.
There has been a temptation in the climate community to treat SRM, indeed, climate engineering more broadly, as a forbidden subject, to worry that even discussing it signals a surrender on mitigation, or opens the door to reckless deployment by actors unwilling to do the hard work of decarbonization. Those are legitimate concerns, and I share them. But the answer to the risks of SRM is not to ignore them. If deployment were to happen, whether carefully governed or not, we would be far worse off without the science to understand what was coming.
SRM is no longer a fringe conversation. It is being considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), taken up in government research programs, in philanthropic investment decisions, and (whether we like it or not) in the ambitions of private actors operating with little to no oversight. Woodwell’s role is not to champion solar geoengineering. Rather, our mission is to provide science-based guardrails to ensure that as this conversation accelerates, it is shaped by rigorous science, ethical seriousness, and a commitment to effective and equitable governance.
This topic is not new to Woodwell. In 2023, we issued a policy brief on the need for research and governance of SRM and this past August, Woodwell awarded a grant through our Fund for Climate Solutions program to investigate whether Woodwell should further responsibly-governed SRM research. Led by Senior Science Policy Advisor Dr. Peter Frumhoff, a longtime thought leader on SRM governance, the project will bring together subject matter experts, NGOs, Arctic community thought leaders, and philanthropists to help inform future work in this space.
I had plenty of time to think about the challenges of SRM governance on my way home from CERAWeek. Flying out of Houston on Friday, I waited over four hours in a TSA screening line. Funding TSA would seem to be a relatively simple task, a core function of government.
Now consider governing a planetary intervention that would alter rainfall patterns, growing seasons, and temperatures across every nation on Earth, requiring sustained international cooperation among countries with profoundly different interests and vulnerabilities. The governance of SRM may in fact be a far greater challenge than the science of SRM.
Nature-based climate solutions will always remain central to Woodwell’s work. But we also recognize that they alone are not enough, and will not shy away from uncomfortable conversations about other approaches that may someday be necessary. Given the current reality of accelerating climate change impacts and relatively modest climate action, it may be that the only thing crazier than talking about solar radiation management is not talking about it.
Onward,
Chaotic March weather has a surprising secret
Seemingly unrelated weather systems illustrate how connected we are by larger patterns that move around in our atmosphere. Meanwhile, “weather whiplash” could be evidence of the warming climate.
As its final days wind down, weather in March 2026 has been one for the record books. It showed why old sayings endure and rivaled college basketball for “March Madness.”
True to the proverb, the month came “in like a lion,” and later echoed Shakespeare’s warning to “beware the ides of March.”
Relentless, record-breaking heat persisted in the West. Powerful storms and bouts of polar air blew through the Central and Eastern U.S., bringing extreme swings in temperature within hours. Hawaii endured flooding rains in a string of kona lows.
It may come as a surprise, but these weather systems also illustrate how connected we are by larger patterns that move around in our atmosphere.
Continue reading on USA Today.
In a new paper, published today in Science, climate scientists from Woodwell Climate Research Center and leading research institutions across the world propose the creation of a new, global methane observation system to track methane emissions from natural ecosystems in near real-time and inform mitigation strategies and global climate policy.
Methane’s powerful near-term warming effects–80 times that of carbon dioxide–position methane mitigation as an urgent and important target for actionable global climate policy. Over the past decade, scientists and policymakers have made important strides in tracking methane emissions from anthropogenic sources, including fossil fuels, livestock, agriculture, waste management, and integrating those emissions in international climate policy and mitigation strategies. However, escalating methane emissions stemming from natural ecosystems driven by global temperature increases and climate feedbacks, such as tropical wetlands and thawing permafrost, make up more than one-third of the global methane budget, and yet remain largely omitted from global methane budgets and decisionmaking due to gaps in monitoring.
“As the planet warms, methane emissions from these natural systems, including permafrost, lakes, and wetlands, are rising quickly, bringing the potential for increased frequency and impact of extreme weather events like flooding, drought, wildfire, and extreme heat. Our ability to track and detect these emissions will be critical to informing solutions to the climate crisis,” said Dr. Jennifer Watts, Scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center and lead author of this paper. “We are calling on national governments, international institutions, philanthropies, the private sector, and other partners to invest in adequate infrastructure to detect and monitor temperature-driven methane emissions from ecosystems to guide solutions that curb the impacts of methane and the climate crisis.”
This paper grew out of a multi-day convening of more than 30 leading methane scientists, modelers, and policy experts held in Aspen, Colorado in October 2025, organized through the Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI). Co-chaired by scientists from Woodwell Climate Research Center/Permafrost Pathways, Stanford University, Arizona State University, and Spark Climate Solutions, the workshop brought together participants from universities, federal agencies, and research institutions spanning six continents to identify critical gaps in natural methane monitoring and chart a course for an integrated global observation system. The findings and recommendations in this paper reflect the collective expertise of that broader scientific community.
As global leaders in methane science, policy, and innovation prepare to gather at Methane 250 in Italy next week to chart a path forward for methane mitigation, this paper makes the case for investing in the development of an integrated Global Ecosystem Methane-Observation System to inform future Global Methane Pledges and action. Specifically, this system would close gaps in methane monitoring by securing and expanding ground-based networks of greenhouse gas observing towers, including flux towers, across underrepresented regions including rapidly thawing Arctic permafrost and wetlands in the tropics.
“Through Permafrost Pathways, we’ve seen firsthand how critical it is to fill the monitoring gaps in the Arctic, where thawing permafrost releases methane across landscapes so vast and varied that our current observation systems cannot fully capture them,” said paper co-lead and workshop co-organizer, Dr. Sue Natali, Senior Scientist at Woodwell Climate and lead of Permafrost Pathways. “This paper charts a path toward the integrated, global monitoring infrastructure we need to account for these emissions in climate policy before they outpace our ability to act.”
“Methane from natural systems is one of the biggest emerging climate risks,” said Dr. Danie Potocek, paper co-author and scientist at Spark Climate Solutions. “And right now, we simply don’t have the monitoring infrastructure to fully understand what we are up against. The global community has made real progress in building systems to track methane from human sources. Now we need to extend that to the rest of the methane challenge.”
Beneath the frozen surface: How AI is uncovering the secrets of permafrost
Beneath the surface of the Arctic, frozen ground holds clues about our planet’s past and its critical information about its future. Known as permafrost, this ground remains below 0°C for at least two years at a time and stores massive amounts of ice, organic carbon, and environmental history accumulated over thousands of years. But understanding how permafrost is changing throughout the Arctic landscape is no small task.
These regions span millions of square kilometers, and the datasets used to study them (from satellite imagery to high-resolution terrain maps) are often too large for most researchers to access or explore. Now, researchers working with the Permafrost Discovery Gateway, a platform hosted by the Arctic Data Center at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), are using artificial intelligence to change that. In collaboration with Google.org, the gateway combines satellite imagery, high-performance computing, and machine learning, opening a new window into Arctic change. One that anyone with an internet browser can explore!
Statement on public availability of scientific information and scientific evidence on climate change
The American Meteorological Society and the scientific societies listed below are surprised and concerned with the decision by the Federal Judiciary Center (FJC) to remove the climate science chapter from the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition and the subsequent letter of February 19, 2026 from 21 attorneys general to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).
Read more on the American Meteorological Society.
Twelve women carrying the flame for climate action despite the headwinds
It’s been a tough year for anyone working on the climate agenda. The Trump Administration’s repeal of the endangerment finding, the legal underpinning of U.S. climate regulation, was a coup de grace, after a litany of regulatory cuts and other moves to remove any impediment to unfettered fossil fuel development in the world’s largest economy.
Where the U.S. has led, much of the world has followed, with action on the nature and climate crises losing steam as corporate and government leaders have been forced to respond to a new U.S. administration determined to up-end the collaborative, rules-based international order.
What changes for climate targets when permafrost emissions are included?
Permafrost and temperature targets
Permafrost, the permanently frozen ground found in large parts of the Arctic and boreal regions, holds enormous amounts of carbon, roughly twice as much as is currently in the atmosphere. As permafrost thaws, it releases carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere and adds significantly to further warming. Permafrost thaw is happening faster and faster and is no longer an issue of the distant future. The potential magnitude of permafrost carbon emissions means they directly affect estimates of remaining carbon budgets needed to keep Earth’s temperature increase below the 1.5° and 2° Celsius thresholds established by the Paris Agreement.
