EAPS

Researchers report that warming from short-lived compounds — greenhouse gases such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons, that linger in the atmosphere for just a year to a few decades — can cause sea levels to rise for hundreds of years after the pollutants have been cleared from the atmosphere.

Short-lived greenhouse gases cause centuries of sea-level rise

Through warming effects, methane and other gases impact rising seas long after leaving the atmosphere.

January 9, 2017

Left: An artist’s conception of the Lucy spacecraft flying by the Trojan Eurybates — one of the six diverse and scientifically important Trojans asteroids to be studied. Right: Psyche, the first mission to a metal asteroid, will map features, structure, composition, and magnetic field, and examine a landscape unlike anything explored before.

Twin wins for planetary exploration

MIT scientists and alumni well represented on newly announced NASA asteroid missions Psyche and Lucy.

January 5, 2017

MIT scientists have found that extreme precipitation events in California should become more frequent as the Earth’s climate warms over this century.

Study finds more extreme storms ahead for California

New technique predicts frequency of heavy precipitation with global warming.

January 3, 2017

Green Labs contest: A certified success

A contest spurred several MIT labs to reduce waste and hazardous materials and conserve energy and water.

December 19, 2016

MIT oceanographers have found that some small marine organisms — mostly bacteria — have a surprisingly low limit to the amount of oxygen they need to breathe.

New study sets oxygen-breathing limit for ocean’s hardiest organisms

Bacteria can survive in marine environments that are almost completely starved of oxygen.

December 19, 2016

A destructive wildfire burned through Canada’s Northern Alberta region, razing neighborhoods in Fort McMurray and displacing tens of thousands of residents.

Climate models may be overestimating the cooling effect of wildfire aerosols

Study finds accounting for year-to-year variability enables more accurate projections of climate change and its impacts.

November 29, 2016

Dust blowing through the Sahara Desert in 2012. Researchers have found that the plume was far less dusty between 5,000 and 11,000 years ago, containing only half the amount of dust that is transported today.

Saharan dust in the wind

Scientists find huge reduction in African dust plume led to stronger Saharan monsoons 11,000 years ago.

November 23, 2016

Left to right: Robert Stoner, deputy director of the MIT Energy Initiative and director of the Tata Center for Technology and Design; Maria Zuber, MIT vice president for research; Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab; and John Fernandez, professor of architecture and director of MIT's Environmental Solutions Initiative.

Forging ahead on climate action

At UN Climate Change Conference, MIT researchers share insights on implementing climate commitments.

November 22, 2016

At forum, MIT community tackles tough ethical questions of climate change

Why is it so hard for human beings to address climate change? What can motivate effective action?

November 21, 2016

NASA’s New Horizons team has found evidence of any icy, slushy ocean beneath Pluto’s “heart."

Pluto’s icy, slushy heart

Data from New Horizons mission suggest a water-ice ocean lies beneath Pluto’s heart-shaped basin.

November 16, 2016

A capacity crowd at the New England Aquarium's Omni Theater enjoyed the 2016 John H. Carlson Lecture, "Big Ice: Antarctica, Greenland, and Boston," presented by Penn State University Professor Richard Alley.

Big ice, big science

Richard Alley delivers 2016 Carlson Lecture on the physics of glaciers and how ice sheets capture a history of the world’s climate.

November 14, 2016

Joern Callies and Jill McDermott win Carl-Gustaf Rossby Awards for PhD theses

Awards to recent alumni honor the memory of Carl-Gustaf Rossby, a pioneer in earth and atmospheric sciences.

November 4, 2016

This image shows free-air gravitational anomalies and a shaded topographic relief of the Moon’s 930-km-diameter Orientale impact basin. Red corresponds to mass excesses and blue to mass deficits relative to a reference value. This gravitational field model, based on measurements acquired from the NASA GRAIL mission, shows the detailed structure of the central basin depression that is filled with...

Retracing the origins of a massive, multi-ring crater

Scientists reconstruct first hours after a giant impact created one of the largest craters on the moon.

October 27, 2016

Clockwise from top left: Riccardo Comin, Timothy Cronin, Andrew Lawrie, Elchanan Mossel, Kerstin Perez, Alexander Radosevich, and Bin Zhang.

Seven new faculty members join the School of Science this fall

October 21, 2016

(Left to right): M. Nafi Toksöz, professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS); Oral Buyukozturk, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE); and Hao Sun, a postdoc in CEE. The Green Building, behind them, has 36 accelerometers that record vibrations and movements on selected floors, from the building’s foundation to its roof.

With new model, buildings may “sense” internal damage

System predicts how MIT’s tallest structure responds to vibrations, may help monitor stress over time.

October 18, 2016

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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