Building the tools needed to ensure safe, effective ocean-based carbon dioxide removal.
Our Mission
[C]Worthy is building software that supports multi-scale oceanographic modeling and data integration for quantifying the efficacy and ecological impacts of ocean-based CDR.
Our goal is to become a Focused Research Organization and we are currently being incubated by Convergent Research.
Questions? Learn more with our FAQ.
Our Projects
[C]Worthy is tackling some of the most challenging scientific and technological problems at the intersection of oceanography and climate change today: ocean modeling software powered by supercomputers, alkalinity research and field trials in an Icelandic fjord, gathering stakeholders in conversation across the global ecosystem, the first maps of a nascent global industry, and so much more.
Learn more about the exciting work our team is doing to develop best-in-class tools for safe and effective ocean-based carbon dioxide removal below.
[C]Worthy in the News
“Just remember these are not just companies pushing this forward, these are not just policy objectives – these are entire groups and disciplines of scientists who are coming along on this journey of helping us understand what it means to do these types of interventions in the natural world.”
“The verification step has to be non-profit, and it has to be separate from your money-making scheme,” says Ho, who co-founded [C]Worthy, a nonprofit that makes open-source software to quantify the efficacy and side effects of marine carbon removal. “As ocean biogeochemists, if we have the inclination and we have the skills, then it behooves us to work on it.”
[C]Worthy staff scientist for data analytics, Tom Nicholas, Ph.D., leads a discussion with Pangeo about VirtualiZarr, his tool developed to overcome some limitations of the “kerchunk” idea in wrangling big datasets like those being used to build software at [C]Worthy.
MRV is the fulcrum of all things CDR so we're having an event centered on the growing MRV ecosystem and how everyone plays together. How does data flow, what are the needed inputs and outputs of each, where are the challenges, overlaps, and opportunities for optimization of the whole process?
“These projects are also challenging to do in an academic setting because they require a larger group of people than you have in a single academic lab…So, what they proposed was to create non-profit science startups.”
Experts discuss the importance of rigorous MRV, entities potentially responsible for funding and conducting MRV, existing ocean observing infrastructure and modeling capabilities, and implementation readiness.
‘CDR can be thought of like “a time machine,” David Ho, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, wrote last year in Nature. Stripping some of the CO2 out of the atmosphere would be like returning to an earlier time with lower concentrations.
"As the world hurtles toward dangerously warmer temperatures, international experts advise that carbon removal will be essential to avoiding the worst climate outcomes.”
[C]Worthy Chief Science Officer David Ho is interviewed by The Weather Network to answer questions about mCDR, carbon emissions reduction, and planting trees.
Isometric is partnering with [C]Worthy—a non-profit “Focused Research Organization” that is building C-Star (Computational Systems for Tracking Ocean Carbon).
"Matt Long, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and director of [C]Worthy, a nonprofit aiming to help build tools to measure and verify ocean carbon removal, is working on a project that received about $3.9 million in ARPA-E’s announcement today.”
Our CEO, Matt Long, talks about [C]Worthy, ocean alkalinity enhancement, and MRV on this podcast with Solve for X.
"Carbon offsets are often touted as a solution to humanity’s bad habit of emitting an awful lot of CO₂. But how many of us actually know what things like carbon offsets and carbon dioxide removal are all about?”
"'This project represents the first time an alkalinity release will be conducted along with the dual tracer technique and allows us the opportunity to determine the movement of CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere and track the evolution of an ocean alkalinity enhancement…”
As we emit CO₂ into the atmosphere, a significant amount - around a third - is taken in by the oceans. With growing interest in carbon removal interventions, ocean scientist Dr David T. Ho tells Gaia about undertaking an exciting experiment.
This Is CDR OpenAir welcomes [C]Worthy Co-Founder and Executive Director Matthew Long to discuss the new organization's vital mission to build software that supports multi-scale oceanographic modeling and data integration for quantifying the efficacy and ecological impacts of marine CDR.
‘The problem is, ocean uptake is relatively slow, compared to our rate of emission,' Long told Salon in a phone interview.
'The requirements for ramping up carbon removal are so dramatically challenging that it’s really an all hands on deck moment for the scientific community.’
The National Academies convened a workshop to consider the application of an Earth system science approach to research related to emerging approaches to climate intervention.
“University of Hawaii oceanographer David Ho argues that the massive ramp-up in renewable energy needed to power ocean-based CDR on the scale Equatic advocates for would be better deployed to curtail fossil fuel use.”