Scoping Our Planet
Our understanding of the Earth system is limited by serious measurement and modelling gaps that lead to unacceptable uncertainties in weather and climate predictions. By cultivating frontier technologies, from measurement platforms to artificial intelligence models, we can fill these gaps and generate actionable knowledge to serve society in diverse and so far impossible ways.
What if we could precisely monitor and predict the effects of climate change across the globe?
Defined by our Programme Directors, opportunity spaces are areas we believe are likely to yield breakthroughs.
In Scoping Our Planet, we seek to transform the accuracy of weather forecasts and climate projections and provide early warning signs of extreme weather events and tipping points.
Updates to this opportunity space
Opportunity spaces evolve as our thinking progresses and additional Programme Directors bring fresh ideas. PD Rico Chandra has joined co-PDs Gemma Bale + Sarah Bohndiek to scale the ambition of Scoping Our Planet.
This expanded version of the opportunity space proposes that breakthroughs in measuring Earth systems will emerge from collaborations between disciplines like advanced measurement platforms, next-generation sensors, and powerful AI modelling. It'll also explore approaches that move beyond data collection to deep integration of information and modelling, enabling us to understand our entire Earth system, maximise planetary resilience, and revolutionise global business.
Core beliefs
The core beliefs that underpin this opportunity space:
Earth measurement and modelling gaps exist in space and time → closing these gaps is crucial to unlock actionable information.
A dynamic interplay of frontier platforms, sensors, and models could parameterise the entire Earth system → the resulting forecasts will revolutionise global business and maximise planetary resilience.
Technological innovation alone is not enough; fragmentation of Earth system research, disconnected from the needs of industry, policymakers, and society, is severely impeding progress → transforming data into knowledge and accountability is vital for a future of human prosperity on a flourishing planet.
Read the programme thesis: Perpetual Flight
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Satellites revolutionised modern life, but they're hitting fundamental limits: fixed orbits and unavoidable constraints imposed by the vast distances of space.
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Aircraft that could stay airborne for years would enable digital services with far greater speed, flexibility, and precision.
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Harnessing atmospheric energy to stay aloft is under-explored, yet birds do so with great success. There is no fundamental reason why machines couldn't outperform birds, including at far greater heights.
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This programme aims to combine advanced hardware, weather modelling, and autonomous flight systems to create aircraft that could tap this same atmospheric energy, with applications ranging from in-situ atmospheric measurements to precise geopositioning.
Programme: Forecasting Tipping Points
To build a programme within an opportunity space, our Programme Directors direct the review, selection, and funding of a portfolio of projects.
Backed by £81m, this programme combines expertise in observation and modelling with innovative sensing systems, to develop a proof-of-concept for an early warning system for climate. By confidently predicting when a system will tip, what the consequences may be, and how quickly that change may unfold, we’ll equip society with the information it needs to build resilience and accelerate proactive climate mitigation.
Opportunity seeds
Outside the scope of programmes and with budgets of up to £500k, these opportunity seeds support ambitious research aligned to the Scoping Our Planet opportunity space.
From sensors that fingerprint methane emissions to measuring ocean mixing by combining seismic reflection + hydrographic data, we're funding an array of projects across individual research teams, universities and start ups to maximise the chance of breakthroughs.
Unlocking Ground-Breaking Observations of Antarctic Mixing With Legacy Data
Kathryn Gunn, University of Southampton
Self-degrading Environmental Exploration Drones
Iganzio Maria Viola, University of Edinburgh
Photonics for Portable Isotopologue and PPT Sensing
Peter Nisbet-Jones, Twin Paradox Labs + Christopher Bridges, University of Surrey
Distributed Photovoltaic Neural Networks for Environmental Monitoring
Andrea Di Falco, University of St Andrews
Antarctic Explorations: Where does glacial meltwater go?
Laura Cimoli, University of Cambridge
REMM: REthinking Methane Measurement
Jane Hodgkinson, Cranfield University
Next-CAM
Ronald Clark, University of Oxford
Persistent Monitoring of Climate Variables Using High Altitude Pseudo Satellites
Steve Tate, Voltitude
Clouds Decoded
Jacqueline Campbell, Asterisk Labs
Rapid Development of a Mass-manufacturable SWIR Hyperspectral Camera
Sam Hornett, Living Optic
WAVECLIM
Serge Guillas, University College London
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