Weather

Researchers from MIT have discovered that integrating “Texas’ self-contained electrical grid with the broader national grid could prevent mass power outages,” reports Zack Budryk for The Hill. The researchers “modeled the effects of a bill introduced by Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) that would connect the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to the rest of the country,” explains Budryk. “They determined that if such a law had been enacted ahead of the 2021 event, Winter Storm Uri, up to 80 percent of the millions of blackouts caused by the storm could have been averted.”

Senior Research Scientist C. Adam Schlosser, deputy director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, speaks with Joshua Miller of The Boston Globe about the 11th consecutive month of record high global temperatures and the overall pace of climate change. The rising temperatures fall “very consistently with what the science is telling us about human interference with climate,” Schlosser explains. 

MIT scientists are working to fortify coastlines with “architected” reefs that can also provide habitats for fish and marine life, reports Ed Brown for TechBriefs. “We looked at the structure of these reefs and we found some similarities to what we had been doing in fluid mechanics. That led us to the idea of trying to make artificial reefs that we could architect and build in a very directed way,” says Prof. Michael Triantafyllou.

BBC Science Focus reporter Alex Hughes spotlights a new study by MIT scientists that suggests more heavy snowfall and rain linked to climate change could increasingly contribute to earthquakes worldwide. “The researchers made these conclusions based on how weather patterns in northern Japan have seemingly contributed to a new 'swarm' of earthquakes,” writes Hughes, “a pattern of multiple, ongoing quakes – that is thought to have begun in 2020.”

A new study conducted by MIT researchers suggests “heavy snowfall could be a factor in triggering swarms of earthquakes,” reports Evan Bush for NBC News. "Those big snowfall events seem to correlate well with the start of these big earthquake swarms," says Prof. William Frank. "We shouldn’t forget the climate itself can also play a role in changing the stress state at depth where earthquakes are happening." 

Researchers at MIT have developed a new measure called “outdoor days,” which describes the number of days per year in which temperatures are comfortable enough for outdoor activities in specific locations around the world, reports Lebawit Lily Girma for Bloomberg News. “Changes in the number of outdoor days will impact directly how people around the world feel climate change,” says Prof. Elfatih Eltahir.

MIT researchers have developed a new tool to quantify how climate change will impact the number of “outdoor days” where people can comfortably spend time outside in specific locations around the world, reports Tim DeChant for TechCrunch. “The MIT tool is a relatable application of a field of study known as climate scenario analysis, a branch of strategic planning that seeks to understand how climate change will impact various regions and demographics,” writes De Chant.

Alexander Bratianu-Badea SM '15 co-founded De-Ice, a startup creating a new and efficient way to thaw aircrafts, reports Kate Duffy for Bloomberg. Bratianu-Badea says, “De-Ice’s strips stick onto the plane with aerospace-grade, acrylic-based adhesive backing. During regulatory tests, the system was exposed to different temperatures, humidifies and chemicals. Even UV light and submersion in a heated oil bath couldn’t damage it.”

Prof. Emeritus Kerry Emanuel speaks with The Hill reporter Zack Budryk about how Hurricane Idalia will impact rural Florida. “The thing that makes [Idalia] a little bit unusual is that it hit a part of the Florida coastline which has experienced very few hurricane-level landfalls in the last hundred years,” says Emanuel.

Prof. Emeritus Kerry Emanuel speaks with Jeff Martin at the Associated Press about the potential influence of the supermoon on Hurricane Idalia. “When the moon is full, the sun and the moon are pulling in the same direction, which has the effect of increasing tides above normal ranges” says Emanuel.

Writing for The Hill, Andre Zollinger, senior policy manager at J-PAL Global, makes the case that “current attention to air pollution can be transformational for how we tackle climate change. Policy leaders in the U.S. and abroad should seize this moment of reckoning over our common struggle for clean air as an opportunity to focus on policies that are known to curb air pollution and simultaneously combat climate change.”

Researchers from Lincoln Laboratory and NASA are working on the TROPICS mission to study tropical cyclones, reports Bella Isaacs-Thomas for the PBS NewsHour. “Technology today — finally — allows us to miniaturize these satellites, fly a lot of them and get that temporal update that we’ve been wanting for so long,” explains Laboratory Fellow William Blackwell.

Researchers from Lincoln Lab and NASA are working on the TROPICS research mission, an effort to collect meteorological data on tropical storms from mini satellites, reports Daniel Cusick for Scientific American. "Scientists will observe temperature profiles in space that would be favorable to storm formation at the Earth’s surface, then use a weather prediction model and radiometric imagery to better predict how such storms would behave," Cusick writes. 

MIT scientists have uncovered evidence that wildfire smoke particles can lead to chemical reactions in the atmosphere that erode the ozone layer, reports Margaret Osborne for Smithsonian Magazine. “From a scientific point of view, it’s very exciting to see this brand new effect,” says Solomon. “From a planetary point of view… it would be just tragic to have mankind screw up solving the ozone hole by deciding that we’re going to [allow] a lot more of these fires if we don’t mitigate climate change.”

Researchers from MIT have found that wildfire smoke can activate chlorine-containing molecules that destroy the ozone layer, writes Donna Lu for The Guardian. “The question in my mind is: is the man-made chlorine going to get … diluted and destroyed out of the atmosphere faster than global climate change is going to increase the frequency and intensity of this kind of fire?” says Prof. Susan Solomon. “I think it’s going to be a race.”