Weather

Angela Crews, a PhD candidate in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, coauthored a study comparing weather data collected by low-cost, shoebox-size satellites with that gathered by much larger, more expensive traditional weather satellite.

For collecting weather data, tiny satellites measure up to billion-dollar cousins

Study finds shoebox-sized CubeSats gather weather data comparably to data collected by larger satellites.

September 27, 2018

Dozens of Lincoln Laboratory staff members spanning five of the laboratory's technical divisions worked on the lidar mapping effort in Puerto Rico.

Using lidar to assess destruction in Puerto Rico

Lincoln Laboratory team's lidar data will allow FEMA to track further damage if another hurricane strikes the island.

August 30, 2018

MIT professors Jule Charney (left) and Edward Lorenz

Featured video: MIT's meteorology pioneers

Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences honors trailblazing professors Jule Charney and Edward Lorenz with a tribute to their lives and legacies.

April 17, 2018

Lightning laboratory test on model aircraft.

Evading in-flight lightning strikes

MIT study shows electrically charging planes would reduce their risk of being struck by lightning.

March 8, 2018

Large power transformers are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather conditions exacerbated by climate change.

Preventing the next blackout

An MIT study projects the potential impact of climate change on large power transformers in U.S. Northeast.

December 5, 2017

“You’re rolling the dice every year,” says professor Kerry Emanuel. “And we believe the odds of a flood like Harvey are changing.” Pictured is an aerial view of Houston during the Hurricane Harvey flooding.

Texas’ odds of Harvey-scale rainfall to increase by end of century

Study finds state’s annual risk of extreme rainfall will rise from 1 to 18 percent.

November 13, 2017

Lup Wai Chew (left) explains his research in Wind Enhancement in Urban Areas to alum Luis De Jesus.

Presentation practice: Hurricanes to prosthetics

Students hone their communication skills by presenting their research projects at the 4th annual Mechanical Engineering Research Exhibition.

October 2, 2017

Engineers at MIT have devised a framework for identifying key patterns that precede an extreme event.

Technique spots warning signs of extreme events

Method may help predict hotspots of instability affecting climate, aircraft performance, and ocean circulation.

September 22, 2017

A view of hurricane Irma from the International Space Station

MIT map offers real-time, crowd-sourced flood reporting during Hurricane Irma

Via social media, residents can contribute to public map that increases safety and helps response planning.

September 8, 2017

Texas Army National Guardsmen help Houston residents affected by flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey board a military vehicle. "With an event like this," says MIT associate professor of urban planning Brent Ryan, "it becomes viscerally evident which residential areas are absolutely not safe from even moderate flooding."

3 Questions: Brent Ryan on Hurricane Harvey’s implications for U.S. cities

Stranded in Houston by hurricane floodwaters, an MIT associate professor sees firsthand how design and policy decisions affected the storm’s impact.

September 1, 2017

This image is a combination of cloud data from NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-11) and color land cover classification data. The Intertropical Convergence Zone is the band of bright white clouds that cuts across the center of the Earth.

Understanding tropical rainfall

Study finds ocean circulation, coupled with trade wind changes, efficiently limits shifting of tropical rainfall patterns.

July 28, 2017

“The Indian monsoon is considered a textbook, clearly defined phenomenon, and we think we know a lot about it, but we don’t,” says Senior Research Scientist Chien Wang. An image from Varanasi, India, shows flooding in 2011.

Study: Indian monsoons have strengthened over past 15 years

A 50-year dry spell has reversed, with more rain to come.

July 24, 2017

“In the Southwest, water availability for irrigation is already a concern,” says Elodie Blanc, a research scientist at MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. “If we mitigate, this could prevent added stress associated with climate change and a severe decrease in runoff in the western United States. But it will be even worse in the future if we don’t do anything a...

Climate change to deplete some US water basins, reduce irrigated crop yields

By 2050, the Southwest will produce significantly less cotton and forage, researchers report.

July 11, 2017

Inspectors assess the damage to a home on the Florida coast following Hurricane Matthew, which struck in October 2016.

Building to better weather the storm

New dashboard developed by the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub helps builders calculate the breakeven cost of hazard mitigation in hurricane-prone areas.

June 13, 2017

“The observations are telling us there will be increases [in extreme rainfall] at almost all latitudes, but if you want to know what’s going to happen at the scale of a continent or smaller, it’s a much more difficult question,” Paul O’Gorman says.

Varied increases in extreme rainfall with global warming

Intensification of extreme rainfall varies from region to region, study shows.

May 15, 2017

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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