Woodwell Climate Research Center (formerly the Woods Hole Research Center) in Falmouth, Massachusetts, has announced a $5 million grant from Google.org for the development of open-access satellite data and AI resources to track Arctic permafrost thaw in near real time.

Timely analysis of permafrost thaw, a critical resource to scientists, decision makers, and community members helping to inform climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, has remained out of reach due to the limitations of current remote sensing and satellite imagery analysis techniques.

Woodwell’s three-year project will develop new tools to expand the Permafrost Discovery Gateway—a multi-institution data platform—using AI technology to streamline data analysis and make it easier to rapidly identify patterns in permafrost thaw datasets. The grant is part of Google.org’s Impact Challenge on Climate Innovation, a $30 million commitment launched in 2022 to fund “big bet projects” that accelerate technological advances in climate information and action.

“This project will be groundbreaking in speeding up data analysis and unlocking completely new technological capabilities in how we do science in swiftly evolving landscapes, and, ultimately, what science itself can do,” said Woodwell climate associate scientist and project lead Anna Liljedahl.

“Nonprofits have told us that when they use AI, they’re able to reach their goals in a third of the time and at half the cost,” said Google.org director of product impact Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink. “The thawing of arctic permafrost is a timely issue the world needs to better understand so that we can take collective action.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Stasz D Sirotkin)