Climate research at Stockholm University has for a long time been highly esteemed, with meteorological process research and modelling, and geological-geographical research on ancient climates and climatic development, as the strongest components. However, contact and respect among groups of researchers was not always the main concern in earlier days, and direct cooperation was unusual.
About five years ago the Natural Sciences Faculty at Stockholm University invested in the establishment of a stronger researcher training facility and a more unified research environment in the field of climate.
The great boost came with the Linné Grant and planning prior to the application. The Linné Grant was the start of what is now Bert Bolin Climate Research Centre (BBCC). Work here is basic research about the climate system over a broad spectrum of chronological scales, from "deep" geological time, over the glaciation cycles, to the climate of the past thousand years, and naturally the climate just now and in the near future.
Boost with the Linné Grant
The Linné Grant is a type of research support which nobody actually has the experience to manage. It is not only the size and long duration of the grant that are new, but also the dual objective of both to strengthen the ongoing research and to build up a really strong research environment for the future. At BBCC, it was decided to concentrate the Linné Grant on three things for which there had been no resources before:
- New permanent researcher/teacher posts with concentration on modelling,
- Post-docs, because they provide an inflow of competence and ideas from the outside,
- Adaptable resources – so that the leaders of the various themes should really have the means to lead, by immediately stepping in and supporting promising ideas, and dealing with rapidly emerging needs in a project.
How does one get researchers from different subjects to cooperate? It really consists of three stages. The first stage is to bring the research groups nearer one another by contact and exposure to one another's research. The second stage is that, out of contact and exposure, mutual respect usually arises, followed by curiosity and perhaps also an interest in cooperating. The third stage is to define joint projects, allocate resources and start on concrete work as soon as possible.
Concentration on post-docs
The first stages are quite cheap. The theme leaders organise seminars and workshops, and in different ways stimulate contact and exchange. There is something of social engineering in this.
It is the third stage that requires resources. BBCC has made great investments to create posts for post-docs. New people bring with them competence that is often new in the research environment. The posts are advertised in areas on which at least two groups of researchers have agreed, and in this way these post-docs are a unifying element in the programme, both socially and with regard to research.
It will be several years before we have a clear idea of the influence of the Linné Grant on research itself, but we can already see that we will probably succeed in our the aim to create a coherent and strong research environment.
Cooperation among groups has increased radically, and there are real success stories. One example is that the cooperation between oceanographers and geologists, within half a year from their first contact, resulted in an article in Nature on how and when the Arctic Ocean changed from an inland sea to being part of the world ocean.
Author
:
Johan Kleman
is Programme Director for Bert Bolin Center for Climate Research.
Literature:
Jacobsson M, Backman J, Rudels B, Nycander J et al, 2007, The Early Miocene Onset of a Ventilated Circulation Regime in the Arctic Ocean. Nature, 447:986-990.