Climate and environmental research supported by TMS

The Trond Mohn Foundation (TMS) has supported research at the University of Bergen and Haukeland University Hospital for a long time, and many probably associate the foundation’s work with grants for translational-oriented medical research. On the occasion of World Environment Day in June, the foundation wants to focus its attention on exciting projects within climate and environmental research at UiB, which make up the largest portfolio of projects in non-medical fields.

In 2018, the foundation allocated 30 million NOK to the 5-year Bjerknes Climate Prediction Unit led by Professor Noel Keenlyside at the Geophysical institute, UiB. The researchers aim to increase the precision of climate forecasting to a level where it can be of benefit to society, for example in landslide-safety, farming and energy supply. “The support from the Trond Mohn Foundation has been absolutely essential to develop research around climate warning further. This is experimental research with origins in new research projects with exciting results that we now see come to fruition. We see that there is potential for further development also for operational functions”, says Kikki Kleiven, director at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.

Benefit for society is important to the foundation’s activities and is also reflected in the funding of other climate-related projects such as DIGSSCORE, the core facility for digital social science that allows large-scale collaboration and sharing of data across disciplines. The Norwegian citizen panel, which is part of DIGSSCORE, celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2023 and analyzes attitudes and their change in society over time. Awarding a TMS Starting Grant to Professor Håvard Haarstad at the Department of Geography also had ripple effects for UiB’s climate research: Haarstad currently heads the Center for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET), which will produce action-oriented knowledge on how to achieve deep, rapid and sustainable transformation of society. CET has also established a good collaboration with the Bjerknes centre, UiB’s flagship in climate research.

The foundation also supports the Centre for Deep Sea Research at the Department of Earth sciences, which has, among other things, contributed to new knowledge about previously unknown ecosystems on the seabed where, for example, exotic wildlife thrives around underground volcanoes that lie so deep on the seabed that sunlight never reaches them. The centre’s new head, associate professor Steffen Leth Jørgensen, was himself recruited to UiB through a TMS Starting Grant and is looking forward to the next three years where the research team will continue their work to learn more about the least explored area on the planet.

In addition to the major investments, the foundation’s Starting Grant program contributes to the new recruitment of young talents who are part of the international and highly recognized climate research environment at the Bjerknes Centre. The young research leaders are given the freedom to build up their own group and their own research profile for four years, and the research communities benefit greatly from the newly recruited: They bring new ideas and networks, publish in recognized journals and many receive large research projects from for example the EU’s framework program like ERC (see the interview with climate scientists Kjetil Våge and Nele Meckler).

Professor Eystein Jansen, former head of the Bjerknes Centre and current vice-president of the European Research Council ERC, says about the TMS Starting Grant: The TMS Starting Grant and ERC’s instruments share the same value base: Giving young researchers the opportunity to follow their most original and ambitious ideas. The TMS projects have proven to be an important platform for applicants from UiB who want to assert themselves in Europe’s research front and be competitive within the ERCs funding instruments. It is great to see how the two programs work together, where a number of TMS-supported researchers have won ERC grants in competition with leading younger researchers from Europe.