New York Times reporter John Schwartz highlights a study co-authored by Prof. Kerry Emanuel that details how, by 2100, areas of the world could face as many as six climate-related crises at once. “Nations, societies in general, have to deal with multiple hazards,” says Emanuel, “and it’s important to put the whole picture together.”
Writing for the American History Magazine, Sarah Richardson highlights the trailblazing path of Ellen Swallow Richards. Richardson notes that Swallow Richards was a “one-woman parade of firsts: first female student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first female fellow of the American Association of Mining and Metallurgy, first female professor at MIT.”
While playing the popular video game Fortnite, graduate student Henri Drake and the Climate Fortnite Squad battle for glory and chat about climate science in an effort to make information about climate change accessible to Fortnite fans. “The squad hopes their streams will be watched by climate-curious gamers who can send in questions for them to answer midgame,” Andrews explains.
Writing for The Guardian, Jeff Nesbit highlights Prof. Kerry Emanuel’s research showing that climate change is increasing the risk of extreme storms. Nesbit explains that Emanuel found that the risk for extreme storms in Tampa, Cairns, and the Persian Gulf increased by up to a factor of 14 over time as Earth’s climate changed.
MIT scientists have developed a new coating that uses solar-power to melt and prevent ice buildup, reports the Xinhua News Agency. The coating, which does not use harmful chemicals, “collects solar radiation, converts it to heat, and spreads that heat around so that the melting is not just confined to the areas exposed directly to the sunlight.”
Researchers from MIT and Harvard studied how climate change could affect food inspections, traffic accidents and police stops, and found that rising temperatures could reduce safety, reports Susan Scutti for CNN. Research scientist Nick Obradovich explains that he hopes the findings can be used to “adapt or to fix things that might go wrong under a changing climate."
In this video, VOA reporter Steve Baragona looks at different methods of harvesting water from fog. Baragona highlights a new system developed by MIT researchers, explaining that in some areas where the water supply is dwindling, “the technology is far cheaper than other options like desalination.”
MIT researchers have developed a new waterproof coating method that is safer for both the environment and humans, reports Brooks Hays for UPI. Lab tests showed the coating, “works to waterproof a variety of fabrics and materials against a variety of liquids,” Hays explains.
MIT graduates Maher Damak and Karim Khalil discuss their startup Infinite Cooling and the new technique they developed to capture and recycle water expelled from power plant cooling towers on Bloomberg Baystate Business. Co-host Tom Moroney calls this energy efficient method that captures up to 80 percent of the water, an “idea that could change the world.”
Xinhua reports that MIT engineers have developed a new method of harvesting water from industrial cooling towers that could decrease the operating cost of power plants. Eventually the new method could also be used to harvest, “safe drinking water for coastal cities where seawater is used to cool local power plants.”
Writing for IEEE Spectrum, David Wagman spotlights a new technology from MIT researchers that could offer water-scarce cities, “a new source of the precious resource” by capturing and reusing water from cooling towers. Prof. Kripa Varanasi notes that their system, “can achieve on the order of 99 percent efficiency,” in capturing the water droplets.
MIT researchers have developed a system that captures water from power plant cooling towers, writes Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe. Finucane explains that, “the captured water would be pure, distilled water and could be piped to a city’s water system or it could be used in the power plant’s boilers, which, unlike the cooling system, require clean water.”
MIT researchers developed an electrically charged fog collector that can attract and collect more water droplets than a regular fog harvester, writes Matt Simon for Wired. The technology could eventually be used to recover water from power plant cooling towers where it can, “capture the plumes and collect that water,” explains Prof. Kripa Varanasi.
In an article for The Verge, Angela Chen highlights a new technique developed by MIT researchers to harvest water from fog. In the future, the researchers hope to place the harvesters, “near cooling plumes to collect and reuse water that would otherwise be lost.”
Fast Company reporter Adele Peters writes that MIT researchers have developed a system that captures large amounts of water from the cooling towers used on power plants and data centers. Prof. Kripa Varanasi explains that he hopes this new technology can be used to address water scarcity: “We are thinking of each of these cooling towers as water farms.”