This chart tracks Enhanced Weathering researchers over time on a diverging axis. Above the line are researchers who published a Enhanced Weathering-relevant paper that year (active); below the line are dormant researchers, split into those who published the previous year and those who published only earlier. New entrants join at the base of the active band each year as a teal block. Enhanced Weathering is one of the youngest and fastest-growing pathways. The top envelope is the number actually publishing in the pathway each year.
The useful pattern is how the active band and the dormant floor compare. Enhanced Weathering currently stands at 1,460 active in 2025 — 41% of members, the highest retention of any pathway. Younger pathways show a steep active band over a shallow dormant floor — the people who arrived are still there — while older or broader ones carry a much deeper dormant pool of past one-time contributors. Watching the top envelope over the years shows whether the pathway is still recruiting and keeping researchers.
Read the active envelope, not the total height. At yearly resolution a skipped publication year reads as “dormant” and a later paper as a return, so the dormant bands overstate permanent exits. The working figure for Enhanced Weathering is the top line each year, and its slope over 2021–2025 is the real signal.
What the chart shows today
1,460 enhanced weathering researchers were still actively publishing in 2025, which works out to 41% of everyone who has ever entered the field - the best retention rate of any carbon removal pathway on the chart. The trajectory line barely flattens between 2021 and 2025, a shape you do not see in older pathways where dormancy steadily eats into the active count. Set that against the company directory, where enhanced weathering accounts for just 33 of 969 visible firms, and a gap opens up: the research bench is deep and sticky while the commercial layer is still thin. Watch this pathway for a wave of academic spinouts - the talent is clearly staying, and it will need somewhere to land.
Chart refreshed from our CDR Company Directory. We publish a data-viz read like this twice a week.