Andy McIlroy warmly recalls Labs Director James Peery’s first visit to Sandia’s California site in January 2020.

“He’d been on the job for less than two weeks, yet he was laser-focused on discussing a strategy for how Sandia approaches climate change,” Andy said.

James asked Andy to champion development of a climate strategy in his role as associate labs director of the Energy and Homeland Security portfolio and emphasized the importance of seeking opportunities to tap into capabilities across the Labs.

“So that’s how we approached this effort,” said Andy, “and that’s the strength of the Labs’ current Climate Security Strategy — it brings all of Sandia together to consider how we can contribute.”

That strength also comes from more than 50 years of Sandia providing the nation with climate-related innovations. “Our current opportunity space in climate change traces back to our roots as a nuclear weapons lab. What we did back in the ’50s and ’60s created a platform that has allowed us to get to where we are today.”

That very early meteorological work examining the effects of nuclear and environmental testing included forecasting and tracking weather to predict how fallout traveled, and studies of the impact of weather on blast effects that eventually led to Sandia’s expertise in modeling weather.

Later, building on meteorological expertise and balloon experiments, Sandia researchers like Bernie Zak stepped into pollution studies in the 1970s. At the same time, Dan Hartley began studying computational solutions to aerodynamic heating problems for the weapons program, which ultimately led to studies in efficient combustion and the inauguration of the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia California.

Andy added, “It was a bit of a winding road, but it actually goes way, way back, and it’s worth remembering this as part of Sandia’s 75th anniversary celebrations.”

Climate modeling in the 2010s

One of Andy’s first moves was to create the Climate Change Security Center. He brought back Rob Leland, a former Sandia executive leader who had moved to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, to be the center’s new director.

“Of all the institutions in the DOE complex, Sandia may be the best equipped to help address climate change,” said Rob, who also leads the Sandia Climate Security Strategy. “The breadth and depth of our capabilities — combined with our ability to work in the national security space — puts us in a strong position to help with the national response.”

Rob knew from his earlier experiences the kind of standout contributions Sandia could make. When he was director of Computing Research at Sandia in the early 2010s, climate scientists around the globe were focused on advancing computer models to better understand and predict climate change.

“By then,” Rob said, “Sandia was already on the cutting-edge of driving change in the field because we had started working in earnest on climate modeling in the mid-’90s.”

Applying techniques from the emerging field of massively parallel computing, Sandia scientists worked to divide climate models across thousands of individual microprocessors working in concert.

“Computational scientist Julie Swisshelm started us down this path. Bill Camp [former director of computing] then had the vision that this was the future of climate modeling and hired Mark Taylor to steer the effort. It was a controversial approach at the time but ultimately carried the day and became the way climate modeling is done today around the world,” Rob said. “It is a great example of how Sandia can adapt sophisticated capabilities for defense missions to important new areas.”

The vast computing power required to run these models also meant that only some institutions had the capacity to do this work. That’s where national laboratories, including Sandia, had a leg up.

“Because of the Labs’ nuclear weapons heritage and our work in modeling and simulation, we were well positioned to plug into climate-modeling activities,” said Rick Stulen, a retired Sandia executive leader who remains active in the sciences and climate change as a board director of the Quest Science Center in Livermore, California.

Stulen added that the idea that climate capabilities could benefit other programs across the Labs was an important consideration for leadership.

“Back in the 2000s, climate was controversial, and there were many questions around why we should be doing this at Sandia. Is this really in our mission space?” Stulen said. “For me, at the time, the ability to exercise our capabilities and algorithm development in a way that would feed back into our nuclear weapons work was the key.”

Seeing the potential, Sandia President and Labs Director Tom Hunter backed the creation in 2010 of a new Energy, Climate, and Infrastructure business unit headed by Stulen.

“I credit Tom and Sandia for standing up and saying, ‘Let’s do this.’ That decision brought the Labs to where it is now — contributing to the larger climate change picture,” Stulen said.

In December 2023, a team Mark led received the Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modeling for running a global-atmosphere model with unprecedentedly high resolution on the world’s first exascale supercomputer. This recognition culminated decades of work by Mark and his Sandia colleagues working in partnership with scientists across the complex to advance climate science.

Climate change, national security and engineering heritage

Stulen believes the roots of Sandia’s climate work stretch even further back to the Labs’ recognition of national security as more than just nuclear security. “It’s in our DNA to think broadly and strategically about national and global security,” he said.

For example, Rob points to Sandia’s efforts in response to the 1970s oil crisis. Answering the call for greater energy independence and interest in novel technologies like concentrating solar power and photovoltaics, DOE established two new facilities to be managed by Sandia: the Combustion Research Facility and the National Solar Thermal Test Facility.

Climate change has also been cited as a growing threat to national security. “Climate change has a whole set of well-established environmental impacts that will impact human systems, the economy, interactions between populations, resource availability — the list goes on,” Rob said. “All of those are precursors to conflicts that could have national security or global security implications.

“There’s a tendency to think of climate change work as residing in the energy sector portfolio. It is certainly very central there, but it also has implications for global security, for defense systems and even potentially for our nuclear deterrence program.”

This was evident as early as the 1980s to Sandia researchers — including then-Sandian and current NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby, who worked on projects related to both nuclear weapons and solar energy during her early career at the Labs.

Along with Sandia’s deep understanding and commitment to national security, Andy sees the Labs’ engineering heritage as another strong differentiator for our climate work.

“Technology is an important part of the solution, but only part of it. We must create technologies that people actually want to use, that are affordable and that fit into people’s lives,” he said.

Sandia’s work in the 2000s on light-emitting diodes, more commonly known as LEDs, is an example of using engineering capabilities to overcome big technical challenges. The Labs’ scientists drew on their expertise in semiconductors, chemical reactor modeling and experimental and theoretical materials physics to improve LED performance and cost.

The LED research helped enable a revolution in lighting that will reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 15 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050. For comparison, U.S. emissions in 2022 totaled around six gigatons, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“This is where the Labs’ engineering heritage comes into play, reminding us to think about end users as we design our products,” Andy said. “That’s how we create solutions that can be broadly adopted by the market and that have a lasting impact.”

“Sandia also has one-of-a-kind research facilities where we can build prototypes that can be replicated and used commercially,” he said. “We excel in working with industry because we speak their language and understand the whole process of engineering for production.”

The future of climate security

Remaining optimistic in the face of climate change is not always easy, but Stulen finds hope and inspiration in his work with the Quest Science Center.

“The youth are hungry for information on climate change, and they are taking action in their communities, which is really gratifying to see,” Stulen said.

Stulen encourages Sandians who have a passion around climate change — whether or not that’s their area of expertise — to consider volunteering.

“We’re hearing from staff that have an interest in climate and want to find a way to contribute,” he said. “Engaging with schools and science clubs can have a huge impact.” For example, some Quest volunteers are partnering with students to use near-infrared cameras to find inefficient lighting in public places.

Taking action to reduce Sandia’s climate footprint is also a key objective in the Labs’ current climate strategy. “We need to ‘walk the talk,’” Andy said. “It’s not acceptable for us to just tell others what would be good for them to do.”

With net-zero plans in place for both the Albuquerque and Livermore sites, Sandia is now working to tap into our engineering expertise to design viable, Labs-appropriate solutions.

“This is a chance for us to live our values and exercise some of our own technologies,” Andy said.

For example, the proposed Advanced Solar Generation and Resilience Deployment project, also known as ASGARD, would combine photovoltaic and concentrating-solar-power installations with energy storage to provide clean, resilient energy for both Sandia’s Albuquerque site and Kirtland Air Force Base.

ASGARD is one of the reasons Rob believes that Sandia is on the cusp of significant contributions to advancing climate security. He also cites the Labs’ work in the Arctic to measure the release of methane and efforts to accurately model clouds — one of the greatest uncertainties in climate simulations.

“Advancements in each of these activities would be a huge win for Sandia and for the country, and they’re also strategically connected. They build on one another to amplify Sandia’s contribution at the national and global scale,” Rob said.

Andy said Sandia’s ability to make consequential contributions unlikely to be made by others is a testament to the journey Rob, Stulen and many others have taken to find the Labs’ niche in the climate space.

Moving forward, Andy thinks everyone at Sandia has a part to play to ensure the success of this work.

“When we say this is a Labswide climate strategy, we mean the whole lab — all of our facilities, organizations, environmental health and safety and support staff at all of our sites,” Andy said.

“From human resources helping us attract the talent to business experts managing these programs successfully, we wouldn’t be here without all the work that that helped build our climate capability and bring people to Sandia. I’m proud that we have such a wide range of folks engaged in our climate work, and I look forward to what we can accomplish together in the future.”