Environment

How can the world combat the continued rise in global temperatures? How about shading the Earth from a portion of the sun’s heat by injecting the stratosphere with reflective aerosols? After all, volcanoes do essentially the same thing, albeit in short, dramatic bursts: When a Vesuvius erupts, it blasts fine ash into the atmosphere, where […] More

On land, it’s fairly obvious where one ecological region ends and another begins, for instance at the boundary between a desert and savanna. In the ocean, much of life is microscopic and far more mobile, making it challenging for scientists to map the boundaries between ecologically distinct marine regions. One way scientists delineate marine communities […] More

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, MIT Solve, a marketplace for social impact innovation, transformed its annual flagship event, Solve at MIT, into an interactive virtual gathering to convene the Solve and MIT communities. On May 12, nearly 800 people tuned in from all around the world to take part in Virtual Solve at MIT. […] More

The motion of the ocean is often thought of in horizontal terms, for instance in the powerful currents that sweep around the planet, or the waves that ride in and out along a coastline. But there is also plenty of vertical motion, particularly in the open seas, where water from the deep can rise up, […] More

Tucked away at the very bottom of the globe surrounding Antarctica, the Southern Ocean has never been easy to study. Its challenging conditions have placed it out of reach to all but the most intrepid explorers. For climate modelers, however, the surface waters of the Southern Ocean provide a different kind of challenge: It doesn’t […] More

Atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon, whose pioneering scientific and environmental policy work has helped to shape international agreements for healing the ozone layer and mitigating climate change, has been named the recipient of the 2020-2021 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award. The Killian Award is the highest honor the MIT faculty can give to one […] More

MIT Professor Kerry Emanuel has made it a personal mission to speak publicly about climate change. He felt a new and surprising duty to speak up after the scientific issue became politicized in the United States. In fact, political identity is the number one indicator of whether or not an American agrees with the irrefutable […] More

Many island nations, including the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, are facing an existential threat as a result of a rising sea level induced by global climate change. A group of MIT researchers led by Skylar Tibbits, an associate professor of design research in the Department of Architecture, is testing ways of harnessing nature’s own […] More