Mission
Lamont's Climate Center (CC) receives income from an endowment established by the Vetlesen Foundation. The amount of the income varies from fiscal year to fiscal year and depends on the dividends earned from the original principal. For the current fiscal year (July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008), the Climate Center received $164,730. The money is used for four major purposes:
- To fund each semester a visit by a prominent scientist. Thure Cerling, University of Utah (31 March - 4 April) was the most recent visitor in 2008.
- To fund one or two miniconferences at Lamont each year. Last July (19 - 20, 2007) the Climate Center along with CORC ARCHES co-sponsored a two-day workshop on the Past and Future Drylands Hydrology (Conveners: Wally Broecker and Richard Seager); the agenda and PowerPoint presentations for this miniconference is located on the Funded Projects web page. Currently there are four miniconferences planned for 2008: The Miniconference on the Dependence of Relative Humidity on Earth Temperature (Conveners: Wallace S. Broecker and Graham Farquhar of ANU, June 23 - 24, 2008); Miniworkshop to Develop a Science Plan to Study the Biogeochemistry and Ecology of the Indian Ocean (Convener: Ajit Subramaniam, dates TBA); Workshop on Aquifers as Archives of Paleoclimate (Convener: Martin Stute, Fall 2008); and Climate Sensitivity Extremes: Assessing the Risk (Conveners: Michael Previdi, Beate Liepert and Dorothy Peteet, Summer 2008).
- To fund each year an undergraduate research project in a climate-related field.
- To fund start-up research projects aimed at leveraging government sponsored research grants. For a list of projects funded in the more recent past, click here
The majority of our funds go into the latter of these four initiatives.