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      Study: Rocks from Mars’ Jezero Crater, which likely predate life on Earth, contain signs of water

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      In a new study appearing today in the journal AGU Advances, scientists at MIT and NASA report that seven rock samples collected along the “fan front” of Mars’ Jezero Crater contain minerals that are typically formed in water. The findings suggest that the rocks were originally deposited by water, or may have formed in the presence of water.The seven samples were collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover in 2022 during its exploration of the crater’s western slope, where some rocks were hypothesized to have formed in what is now a dried-up ancient lake. Members of the Perseverance science team, including MIT scientists, have studied the rover’s images and chemical analyses of the samples, and confirmed that the rocks indeed contain signs of water, and that the crater was likely once a watery, habitable environment.Whether the crater was actually inhabited is yet unknown. The team found that the presence of organic matter — the starting material for life — cannot be confirmed, at least based on the rover’s measurements. But judging from the rocks’ mineral content, scientists believe the samples are their best chance of finding signs of ancient Martian life once the rocks are returned to Earth for more detailed analysis.“These rocks confirm the presence, at least temporarily, of habitable environments on Mars,” says the study’s lead author, Tanja Bosak, professor of geobiology in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “What we’ve found is that indeed there was a lot of water activity. For how long, we don’t know, but certainly for long enough to create these big sedimentary deposits.”What’s more, some of the collected samples may have originally been deposited in the ancient lake more than 3.5 billion years ago — before even the first signs of life on Earth.“These are the oldest rocks that may have been deposited by water, that we’ve ever laid hands or rover arms on,” says co-author Benjamin Weiss, the Robert R. Shrock Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at MIT. “That’s exciting, because it means these are the most promising rocks that may have preserved fossils, and signatures of life.”The study’s MIT co-authors include postdoc Eva Scheller, and research scientist Elias Mansbach, along with members of the Perseverance science team.At the front

      NASA’s Perseverance rover collected rock samples from two locations seen in this image of Mars’ Jezero Crater: “Wildcat Ridge” (lower left) and “Skinner Ridge” (upper right).

      Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

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      The new rock samples were collected in 2022 as part of the rover’s Fan Front Campaign — an exploratory phase during which Perseverance traversed Jezero Crater’s western slope, where a fan-like region contains sedimentary, layered rocks. Scientists suspect that this “fan front” is an ancient delta that was created by sediment that flowed with a river and settled into a now bone-dry lakebed. If life existed on Mars, scientists believe that it could be preserved in the layers of sediment along the fan front.In the end, Perseverance collected seven samples from various locations along the fan front. The rover obtained each sample by drilling into the Martian bedrock and extracting a pencil-sized core, which it then sealed in a tube to one day be retrieved and returned to Earth for detailed analysis.

      Composed of multiple images from NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, this mosaic shows a rocky outcrop called “Wildcat Ridge,” where the rover extracted two rock cores and abraded a circular patch to investigate the rock’s composition.

      Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

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      Prior to extracting the cores, the rover took images of the surrounding sediments at each of the seven locations. The science team then processed the imaging data to estimate a sediment’s average grain size and mineral composition. This analysis showed that all seven collected samples likely contain signs of water, suggesting that they were initially deposited by water.Specifically, Bosak and her colleagues found evidence of certain minerals in the sediments that are known to precipitate out of water.“We found lots of minerals like carbonates, which are what make reefs on Earth,” Bosak says. “And it’s really an ideal material that can preserve fossils of microbial life.”Interestingly, the researchers also identified sulfates in some samples that were collected at the base of the fan front. Sulfates are minerals that form in very salty water — another sign that water was present in the crater at one time — though very salty water, Bosak notes, “is not necessarily the best thing for life.” If the entire crater was once filled with very salty water, then it would be difficult for any form of life to thrive. But if only the bottom of the lake were briny, that could be an advantage, at least for preserving any signs of life that may have lived further up, in less salty layers, that eventually died and drifted down to the bottom.“However salty it was, if there were any organics present, it’s like pickling something in salt,” Bosak says. “If there was life that fell into the salty layer, it would be very well-preserved.”Fuzzy fingerprintsBut the team emphasizes that organic matter has not been confidently detected by the rover’s instruments. Organic matter can be signs of life, but can also be produced by certain geological processes that have nothing to do with living matter. Perseverance’s predecessor, the Curiosity rover, had detected organic matter throughout Mars’ Gale Crater, which scientists suspect may have come from asteroids that made impact with Mars in the past.And in a previous campaign, Perseverance detected what appeared to be organic molecules at multiple locations along Jezero Crater’s floor. These observations were taken by the rover’s Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument, which uses ultraviolet light to scan the Martian surface. If organics are present, they can glow, similar to material under a blacklight. The wavelengths at which the material glows act as a sort of fingerprint for the kind of organic molecules that are present.In Perseverance’s previous exploration of the crater floor, SHERLOC appeared to pick up signs of organic molecules throughout the region, and later, at some locations along the fan front. But a careful analysis, led by MIT’s Eva Scheller, has found that while the particular wavelengths observed could be signs of organic matter, they could just as well be signatures of substances that have nothing to do with organic matter.“It turns out that cerium metals incorporated in minerals actually produce very similar signals as the organic matter,” Scheller says. “When investigated, the potential organic signals were strongly correlated with phosphate minerals, which always contain some cerium.”Scheller’s work shows that the rover’s measurements cannot be interpreted definitively as organic matter.“This is not bad news,” Bosak says. “It just tells us there is not very abundant organic matter. It’s still possible that it’s there. It’s just below the rover’s detection limit.”When the collected samples are finally sent back to Earth, Bosak says laboratory instruments will have more than enough sensitivity to detect any organic matter that might lie within.“On Earth, once we have microscopes with nanometer-scale resolution, and various types of instruments that we cannot staff on one rover, then we can actually attempt to look for life,” she says.This work was supported, in part, by NASA. More

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      MIT School of Science launches Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy

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      The MIT School of Science is launching a center to advance knowledge and computational capabilities in the field of sustainability science, and support decision-makers in government, industry, and civil society to achieve sustainable development goals. Aligned with the Climate Project at MIT, researchers at the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy will develop and apply expertise from across the Institute to improve understanding of sustainability challenges, and thereby provide actionable knowledge and insight to inform strategies for improving human well-being for current and future generations.Noelle Selin, professor at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, will serve as the center’s inaugural faculty director. C. Adam Schlosser and Sergey Paltsev, senior research scientists at MIT, will serve as deputy directors, with Anne Slinn as executive director.Incorporating and succeeding both the Center for Global Change Science and Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change while adding new capabilities, the center aims to produce leading-edge research to help guide societal transitions toward a more sustainable future. Drawing on the long history of MIT’s efforts to address global change and its integrated environmental and human dimensions, the center is well-positioned to lead burgeoning global efforts to advance the field of sustainability science, which seeks to understand nature-society systems in their full complexity. This understanding is designed to be relevant and actionable for decision-makers in government, industry, and civil society in their efforts to develop viable pathways to improve quality of life for multiple stakeholders.“As critical challenges such as climate, health, energy, and food security increasingly affect people’s lives around the world, decision-makers need a better understanding of the earth in its full complexity — and that includes people, technologies, and institutions as well as environmental processes,” says Selin. “Better knowledge of these systems and how they interact can lead to more effective strategies that avoid unintended consequences and ensure an improved quality of life for all.”    Advancing knowledge, computational capability, and decision supportTo produce more precise and comprehensive knowledge of sustainability challenges and guide decision-makers to formulate more effective strategies, the center has set the following goals:Advance fundamental understanding of the complex interconnected physical and socio-economic systems that affect human well-being. As new policies and technologies are developed amid climate and other global changes, they interact with environmental processes and institutions in ways that can alter the earth’s critical life-support systems. Fundamental mechanisms that determine many of these systems’ behaviors, including those related to interacting climate, water, food, and socio-economic systems, remain largely unknown and poorly quantified. Better understanding can help society mitigate the risks of abrupt changes and “tipping points” in these systems.Develop, establish and disseminate new computational tools toward better understanding earth systems, including both environmental and human dimensions. The center’s work will integrate modeling and data analysis across disciplines in an era of increasing volumes of observational data. MIT multi-system models and data products will provide robust information to inform decision-making and shape the next generation of sustainability science and strategy.Produce actionable science that supports equity and justice within and across generations. The center’s research will be designed to inform action associated with measurable outcomes aligned with supporting human well-being across generations. This requires engaging a broad range of stakeholders, including not only nations and companies, but also nongovernmental organizations and communities that take action to promote sustainable development — with special attention to those who have historically borne the brunt of environmental injustice.“The center’s work will advance fundamental understanding in sustainability science, leverage leading-edge computing and data, and promote engagement and impact,” says Selin. “Our researchers will help lead scientists and strategists across the globe who share MIT’s commitment to mobilizing knowledge to inform action toward a more sustainable world.”Building a better world at MITBuilding on existing MIT capabilities in sustainability, science, and strategy, the center aims to: focus research, education, and outreach under a theme that reflects a comprehensive state of the field and international research directions, fostering a dynamic community of students, researchers, and faculty;raise the visibility of sustainability science at MIT, emphasizing links between science and action, in the context of existing Institute goals and other efforts on climate and sustainability, and in a way that reflects the vital contributions of a range of natural and social science disciplines to understanding human-environment systems; andre-emphasize MIT’s long-standing expertise in integrated systems modeling while leveraging the Institute’s concurrent leading-edge strengths in data and computing, establishing leadership that harnesses recent innovations, including those in machine learning and artificial intelligence, toward addressing the science challenges of global change and sustainability.“The Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy will provide the necessary synergy for our MIT researchers to develop, deploy, and scale up serious solutions to climate change and other critical sustainability challenges,” says Nergis Mavalvala, the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics and dean of the MIT School of Science. “With Professor Selin at its helm, the center will also ensure that these solutions are created in concert with the people who are directly affected now and in the future.”The center builds on more than three decades of achievements by the Center for Global Change Science and the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, both of which were directed or co-directed by professor of atmospheric science Ronald Prinn. 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      Scientists find a human “fingerprint” in the upper troposphere’s increasing ozone

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      Ozone can be an agent of good or harm, depending on where you find it in the atmosphere. Way up in the stratosphere, the colorless gas shields the Earth from the sun’s harsh ultraviolet rays. But closer to the ground, ozone is a harmful air pollutant that can trigger chronic health problems including chest pain, difficulty breathing, and impaired lung function.And somewhere in between, in the upper troposphere — the layer of the atmosphere just below the stratosphere, where most aircraft cruise — ozone contributes to warming the planet as a potent greenhouse gas.There are signs that ozone is continuing to rise in the upper troposphere despite efforts to reduce its sources at the surface in many nations. Now, MIT scientists confirm that much of ozone’s increase in the upper troposphere is likely due to humans.In a paper appearing today in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, the team reports that they detected a clear signal of human influence on upper tropospheric ozone trends in a 17-year satellite record starting in 2005.“We confirm that there’s a clear and increasing trend in upper tropospheric ozone in the northern midlatitudes due to human beings rather than climate noise,” says study lead author Xinyuan Yu, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS).“Now we can do more detective work and try to understand what specific human activities are leading to this ozone trend,” adds co-author Arlene Fiore, the Peter H. Stone and Paola Malanotte Stone Professor in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.The study’s MIT authors include Sebastian Eastham and Qindan Zhu, along with Benjamin Santer at the University of California at Los Angeles, Gustavo Correa of Columbia University, Jean-François Lamarque at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Jerald Zimeke at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.Ozone’s tangled webUnderstanding ozone’s causes and influences is a challenging exercise. Ozone is not emitted directly, but instead is a product of “precursors” — starting ingredients, such as nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), that react in the presence of sunlight to form ozone. These precursors are generated from vehicle exhaust, power plants, chemical solvents, industrial processes, aircraft emissions, and other human-induced activities.Whether and how long ozone lingers in the atmosphere depends on a tangle of variables, including the type and extent of human activities in a given area, as well as natural climate variability. For instance, a strong El Niño year could nudge the atmosphere’s circulation in a way that affects ozone’s concentrations, regardless of how much ozone humans are contributing to the atmosphere that year.Disentangling the human- versus climate-driven causes of ozone trend, particularly in the upper troposphere, is especially tricky. Complicating matters is the fact that in the lower troposphere — the lowest layer of the atmosphere, closest to ground level — ozone has stopped rising, and has even fallen in some regions at northern midlatitudes in the last few decades. This decrease in lower tropospheric ozone is mainly a result of efforts in North America and Europe to reduce industrial sources of air pollution.“Near the surface, ozone has been observed to decrease in some regions, and its variations are more closely linked to human emissions,” Yu notes. “In the upper troposphere, the ozone trends are less well-monitored but seem to decouple with those near the surface, and ozone is more easily influenced by climate variability. So, we don’t know whether and how much of that increase in observed ozone in the upper troposphere is attributed to humans.”A human signal amid climate noiseYu and Fiore wondered whether a human “fingerprint” in ozone levels, caused directly by human activities, could be strong enough to be detectable in satellite observations in the upper troposphere. To see such a signal, the researchers would first have to know what to look for.For this, they looked to simulations of the Earth’s climate and atmospheric chemistry. Following approaches developed in climate science, they reasoned that if they could simulate a number of possible climate variations in recent decades, all with identical human-derived sources of ozone precursor emissions, but each starting with a slightly different climate condition, then any differences among these scenarios should be due to climate noise. By inference, any common signal that emerged when averaging over the simulated scenarios should be due to human-driven causes. Such a signal, then, would be a “fingerprint” revealing human-caused ozone, which the team could look for in actual satellite observations.With this strategy in mind, the team ran simulations using a state-of-the-art chemistry climate model. They ran multiple climate scenarios, each starting from the year 1950 and running through 2014.From their simulations, the team saw a clear and common signal across scenarios, which they identified as a human fingerprint. They then looked to tropospheric ozone products derived from multiple instruments aboard NASA’s Aura satellite.“Quite honestly, I thought the satellite data were just going to be too noisy,” Fiore admits. “I didn’t expect that the pattern would be robust enough.”But the satellite observations they used gave them a good enough shot. The team looked through the upper tropospheric ozone data derived from the satellite products, from the years 2005 to 2021, and found that, indeed, they could see the signal of human-caused ozone that their simulations predicted. The signal is especially pronounced over Asia, where industrial activity has risen significantly in recent decades and where abundant sunlight and frequent weather events loft pollution, including ozone and its precursors, to the upper troposphere.Yu and Fiore are now looking to identify the specific human activities that are leading to ozone’s increase in the upper troposphere.“Where is this increasing trend coming from? Is it the near-surface emissions from combusting fossil fuels in vehicle engines and power plants? Is it the aircraft that are flying in the upper troposphere? Is it the influence of wildland fires? Or some combination of all of the above?” Fiore says. “Being able to separate human-caused impacts from natural climate variations can help to inform strategies to address climate change and air pollution.”This research was funded, in part, by NASA. More

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      A bright and airy hub for climate at MIT

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      Seen from a distance, MIT’s Cecil and Ida Green Building (Building 54) — designed by renowned architect and MIT alumnus I.M. Pei ’40 — is one of the most iconic buildings on the Cambridge, Massachusetts, skyline. Home to the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), the 21-story concrete structure soars over campus, topped with its distinctive spherical radar dome. Close up, however, it was a different story.A sunless, two-story, open-air plaza beneath the tower previously served as a nondescript gateway to the department’s offices, labs, and classrooms above. “It was cold and windy — probably the windiest place on campus,” EAPS department head Robert van der Hilst, the Schlumberger Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, told a packed auditorium inside the building in March. “You would pass through the elevators and disappear into the corridors, never to be seen again until the end of the day.”Van der Hilst was speaking at a dedication event to celebrate the opening of the renovated and expanded space, 60 years after the Green Building’s original dedication in 1964. In a dramatic transformation, the perpetually-shaded expanse beneath the tower has been filled with an airy, glassed-in structure that is as inviting as the previous space was forbidding.Designed to meet LEED-platinum certification, the newly-constructed Tina and Hamid Moghadam Building (Building 55) seems to float next to the Brutalist tower, its glass façade both opening up the interior and reflecting the sunlight and green space outside. The 300-seat auditorium within the original tower has been similarly transformed, bringing light and space to the newly dubbed Dixie Lee Bryant (1891) Lecture Hall, named after the first person to earn a geology degree at MIT.Catalyzing collaborationThe project is about more than updating an overlooked space. “The building we’re here to celebrate today does something else,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said at the dedication.“In its lightness, in its transparency, it calls attention not to itself, but to the people gathered inside it. In its warmth, its openness, it makes room for culture and community. And it welcomes in those who don’t yet belong … as we take on the immense challenges of climate together,” she continued, referencing the recent launch of The Climate Project at MIT — a whole-of-MIT initiative to innovate bold solutions to climate change. In MIT’s famously decentralized structure, the Moghadam Building provides a new physical hub for students, scientists, and engineers interested in climate and the environment to congregate and share ideas.From the start, fostering this kind of multidisciplinary collaboration was part of Van der Hilst’s vision. In addition to serving as the flagship location for EAPS, Building 54 has long been the administrative home of the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering — a graduate program in partnership with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. With the addition of Building 55, EAPS has now been joined by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI) — a campus-wide program fostering education, outreach, and innovation in earth system science, urban infrastructure, and sustainability — and will welcome closer collaboration with Terrascope — a first-year learning community which invites its students to take on real-world environmental challenges.A shared vision comes to lifeThe building project dovetailed with the long-overdue refurbishment of the Green Building. After a multi-year fundraising campaign where Van der Hilst spearheaded the department’s efforts, the project received a major boost from lead donors Tina and Hamid Moghadam ’77, SM ’78, allowing the department to break ground in November 2021.In Moghadam, chair and CEO of Prologis, which owns 1.2 billion square feet of warehouses and other logistics infrastructure worldwide, EAPS found a fellow champion for climate and environmental innovation. By putting solar panels on the roofs of Prologis buildings, the company is now the second largest on-site producer of solar energy in the United States. “I don’t think there needs to be a trade-off between good sound economics and return on investment and solving climate change problems,” Moghadam said at the dedication. “The solutions that really work are the ones that actually make sense in a market economy.”Architectural firm AW-ARCH designed the Moghadam Building with a light touch, emphasizing spaciousness in contrast to the heavy concrete buildings that surround it. “The kind of delicacy and fragility of the thing is in some ways a depiction of what happens here,” said architect and co-founding partner Alex Anmahian at the dedication reception, giving a nod to the study of the delicate balance of the earth system itself. The sense is further illustrated by the responsiveness of the façade to the surrounding environment, which, depending on the time of day and quality of light, makes the glass alternately reflective and transparent.Inside, the 11,900-square foot pavilion is highly flexible and serves as a showcase for the science that happens in the labs and offices above. Central to the space is a 16-foot by 9-foot video wall featuring vivid footage of field work, lab research, data visualizations, and natural phenomena — visible even to passers-by outside. The video wall is counterposed to an unpretentious set of stair-step bleachers leading to the second floor that could play host to anything from a scientific lecture to a community pizza-and-movie night.Van der Hilst has referred to his vision for the atrium as a “campus living room,” and the furniture throughout is intentionally chosen to allow for impromptu rearrangements, providing a valuable public space on campus for students to work and socialize.The second level is similarly adaptable, featuring three classrooms with state-of-the-art teaching technologies that can be transformed from a single large space for a hackathon to intimate rooms for discussion.“The space is really meant for a yet unforeseen experience,” Anmahian says. “The reason it is so open is to allow for any possibility.”The inviting, dynamic design of the pavilion has also become an instant point of pride for the building’s inhabitants. At the dedication, School of Science dean Nergis Mavalvala quipped that anyone walking into the space “gains two inches in height.”Van der Hilst quoted a colleague with a similar observation: “Now, when I come into this space, I feel respected by it.”The perfect complementAnother significant feature of the project is the List Visual Arts Center Percent-for-Art Program installation by conceptual artist Julian Charrière, entitled “Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More.”Consisting of three interrelated works, the commission includes: “Not All Who Wander Are Lost,” three glacial erratic boulders which sit atop their own core samples in the surrounding green space; “We Are All Astronauts,” a trio of glass pillars containing vintage globes with distinctions between nations, land, and sea removed; and “Pure Waste,” a synthetic diamond embedded in the foundation, created from carbon captured from the air and the breath of researchers who work in the building.Known for themes that explore the transformation of the natural world over time and humanity’s complex relationship with our environment, Charrière was a perfect fit to complement the new Building 55 — offering a thought-provoking perspective on our current environmental challenges while underscoring the value of the research that happens within its walls. 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      in Environment

      Mission directors announced for the Climate Project at MIT

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      The Climate Project at MIT has appointed leaders for each of its six focal areas, or Climate Missions, President Sally Kornbluth announced in a letter to the MIT community today.Introduced in February, the Climate Project at MIT is a major new effort to change the trajectory of global climate outcomes for the better over the next decade. The project will focus MIT’s strengths on six broad climate-related areas where progress is urgently needed. The mission directors in these fields, representing diverse areas of expertise, will collaborate with faculty and researchers across MIT, as well as each other, to accelerate solutions that address climate change.“The mission directors will be absolutely central as the Climate Project seeks to marshal the Institute’s talent and resources to research, develop, deploy and scale up serious solutions to help change the planet’s climate trajectory,” Kornbluth wrote in her letter, adding: “To the faculty members taking on these pivotal roles: We could not be more grateful for your skill and commitment, or more enthusiastic about what you can help us all achieve, together.”The Climate Project will expand and accelerate MIT’s efforts to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and respond to climate effects such as extreme heat, rising sea levels, and reduced crop yields. At the urgent pace needed, the project will help the Institute create new external collaborations and deepen existing ones to develop and scale climate solutions.The Institute has pledged an initial $75 million to the project, including $25 million from the MIT Sloan School of Management to launch a complementary effort, the new MIT Climate Policy Center. MIT has more than 300 faculty and senior researchers already working on climate issues, in collaboration with their students and staff. The Climate Project at MIT builds on their work and the Institute’s 2021 “Fast Forward” climate action plan.Richard Lester, MIT’s vice provost for international activities and the Japan Steel Industry Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering, has led the Climate Project’s formation; MIT will shortly hire a vice president for climate to oversee the project. The six Climate Missions and the new mission directors are as follows:Decarbonizing energy and industryThis mission supports advances in the electric power grid as well as the transition across all industry — including transportation, computing, heavy production, and manufacturing — to low-emissions pathways.The mission director is Elsa Olivetti PhD ’07, who is MIT’s associate dean of engineering, the Jerry McAfee Professor in Engineering, and a professor of materials science and engineering since 2014.Olivetti analyzes and improves the environmental sustainability of materials throughout the life cycle and across the supply chain, by linking physical and chemical processes to systems impact. She researches materials design and synthesis using natural language processing, builds models of material supply and technology demand, and assesses the potential for recovering value from industrial waste through experimental approaches. Olivetti has experience building partnerships across the Institute and working with industry to implement large-scale climate solutions through her role as co-director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) and as faculty lead for PAIA, an industry consortium on the carbon footprinting of computing.Restoring the atmosphere, protecting the land and oceansThis mission is centered on removing or storing greenhouse gases that have already been emitted into the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide and methane, and on protecting ocean and land ecosystems, including food and water systems.MIT has chosen two mission directors: Andrew Babbin and Jesse Kroll. The two bring together research expertise from two critical domains of the Earth system, oceans and the atmosphere, as well as backgrounds in both the science and engineering underlying our understanding of Earth’s climate. As co-directors, they jointly link MIT’s School of Science and School of Engineering in this domain.Babbin is the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Professor in MIT’s Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate. He is a marine biogeochemist whose specialty is studying the carbon and nitrogen cycle of the oceans, work that is related to evaluating the ocean’s capacity for carbon storage, an essential element of this mission’s work. He has been at MIT since 2017.Kroll is a professor in MIT’s Department of of Civil and Environmental Engineering, a professor of chemical engineering, and the director of the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory. He is a chemist who studies organic compounds and particulate matter in the atmosphere, in order to better understand how perturbations to the atmosphere, both intentional and unintentional, can affect air pollution and climate.Empowering frontline communitiesThis mission focuses on the development of new climate solutions in support of the world’s most vulnerable populations, in areas ranging from health effects to food security, emergency planning, and risk forecasting.The mission director is Miho Mazereeuw, an associate professor of architecture and urbanism in MIT’s Department of Architecture in the School of Architecture and Planning, and director of MIT’s Urban Risk Lab. Mazereeuw researches disaster resilience, climate change, and coastal strategies. Her lab has engaged in design projects ranging from physical objects to software, while exploring methods of engaging communities and governments in preparedness efforts, skills she brings to bear on building strong collaborations with a broad range of stakeholders.Mazereeuw is also co-lead of one of the five projects selected in MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges competition in 2022, an effort to help communities prepare by understanding the risk of extreme weather events for specific locations.Building and adapting healthy, resilient citiesA majority of the world’s population lives in cities, so urban design and planning is a crucial part of climate work, involving transportation, infrastructure, finance, government, and more.Christoph Reinhart, the Alan and Terri Spoon Professor of Architecture and Climate and director of MIT’s Building Technology Program in the School of Architecture and Planning, is the mission director in this area. The Sustainable Design Lab that Reinhart founded when he joined MIT in 2012 has launched several technology startups, including Mapdwell Solar System, now part of Palmetto Clean Technology, as well as Solemma, makers of an environmental building design software used in architectural practice and education worldwide. Reinhart’s online course on Sustainable Building Design has an enrollment of over 55,000 individuals and forms part of MIT’s XSeries Program in Future Energy Systems.Inventing new policy approachesClimate change is a unique crisis. With that in mind, this mission aims to develop new institutional structures and incentives — in carbon markets, finance, trade policy, and more — along with decision support tools and systems for scaling up climate efforts.Christopher Knittel brings extensive knowledge of these topics to the mission director role. The George P. Shultz Professor and Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Knittel has produced high-impact research in multiple areas; his studies on emissions and the automobile industry have evaluated fuel-efficiency standards, changes in vehicle fuel efficiency, market responses to fuel-price changes, and the health impact of automobiles.Beyond that, Knittel has also studied the impact of the energy transition on jobs, conducted high-level evaluations of climate policies, and examined energy market structures. He joined the MIT faculty in 2011. He also serves as the director of the MIT Climate Policy Center, which will work closely with all six missions.Wild cardsThis mission consists of what the Climate Project at MIT calls “unconventional solutions outside the scope of the other missions,” and will have a broad portfolio for innovation.While all the missions will be charged with encouraging unorthodox approaches within their domains, this mission will seek out unconventional solutions outside the scope of the others, and has a broad mandate for promoting them.The mission director in this case is Benedetto Marelli, the Paul M. Cook Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Marelli’s research group develops biopolymers and bioinspired materials with reduced environmental impact compared to traditional technologies. He engages with research at multiple scales, including nanofabrication, and the research group has conducted extensive work on food security and safety while exploring new techniques to reduce waste through enhanced food preservation and to precisely deliver agrochemicals in plants and in soil.As Lester and other MIT leaders have noted, the Climate Project at MIT is still being shaped, and will have the flexibility to accommodate a wide range of projects, partnerships, and approaches needed for thoughtful, fast-moving change. By filling out the leadership structure, today’s announcement is a major milestone in making the project operational.In addition to the six Climate Missions, the Climate Project at MIT includes Climate Frontier Projects, which are efforts launched by these missions, and a Climate HQ, which will support fundamental research, education, and outreach, as well as new resources to connect research to the practical work of climate response. More

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      in Environment

      China-based emissions of three potent climate-warming greenhouse gases spiked in past decade

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      When it comes to heating up the planet, not all greenhouse gases are created equal. They vary widely in their global warming potential (GWP), a measure of how much infrared thermal radiation a greenhouse gas would absorb over a given time frame once it enters the atmosphere. For example, measured over a 100-year period, the GWP of methane is about 28 times that of carbon dioxide (CO2), and the GWPs of a class of greenhouse gases known as perfluorocarbons (PFCs) are thousands of times that of CO2. The lifespans in the atmosphere of different greenhouse gases also vary widely. Methane persists in the atmosphere for around 10 years; CO2 for over 100 years, and PFCs for up to tens of thousands of years.Given the high GWPs and lifespans of PFCs, their emissions could pose a major roadblock to achieving the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change — to limit the increase in global average surface temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Now, two new studies based on atmospheric observations inside China and high-resolution atmospheric models show a rapid rise in Chinese emissions over the last decade (2011 to 2020 or 2021) of three PFCs: tetrafluoromethane (PFC-14) and hexafluoroethane (PFC-116) (results in PNAS), and perfluorocyclobutane (PFC-318) (results in Environmental Science & Technology).Both studies find that Chinese emissions have played a dominant role in driving up global emission levels for all three PFCs.The PNAS study identifies substantial PFC-14 and PFC-116 emission sources in the less-populated western regions of China from 2011 to 2021, likely due to the large amount of aluminum industry in these regions. The semiconductor industry also contributes to some of the emissions detected in the more economically developed eastern regions. These emissions are byproducts from aluminum smelting, or occur during the use of the two PFCs in the production of semiconductors and flat panel displays. During the observation period, emissions of both gases in China rose by 78 percent, accounting for most of the increase in global emissions of these gases.The ES&T study finds that during 2011-20, a 70 percent increase in Chinese PFC-318 emissions (contributing more than half of the global emissions increase of this gas) — originated primarily in eastern China. The regions with high emissions of PFC-318 in China overlap with geographical areas densely populated with factories that produce polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, commonly used for nonstick cookware coatings), implying that PTFE factories are major sources of PFC-318 emissions in China. In these factories, PFC-318 is formed as a byproduct.“Using atmospheric observations from multiple monitoring sites, we not only determined the magnitudes of PFC emissions, but also pinpointed the possible locations of their sources,” says Minde An, a postdoc at the MIT Center for Global Change Science (CGCS), and corresponding author of both studies. “Identifying the actual source industries contributing to these PFC emissions, and understanding the reasons for these largely byproduct emissions, can provide guidance for developing region- or industry-specific mitigation strategies.”“These three PFCs are largely produced as unwanted byproducts during the manufacture of otherwise widely used industrial products,” says MIT professor of atmospheric sciences Ronald Prinn, director of both the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and CGCS, and a co-author of both studies. “Phasing out emissions of PFCs as early as possible is highly beneficial for achieving global climate mitigation targets and is likely achievable by recycling programs and targeted technological improvements in these industries.”Findings in both studies were obtained, in part, from atmospheric observations collected from nine stations within a Chinese network, including one station from the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE) network. For comparison, global total emissions were determined from five globally distributed, relatively unpolluted “background” AGAGE stations, as reported in the latest United Nations Environment Program and World Meteorological Organization Ozone Assessment report. More

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      in Environment

      Q&A: What past environmental success can teach us about solving the climate crisis

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      Susan Solomon, MIT professor of Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences (EAPS) and of chemistry, played a critical role in understanding how a class of chemicals known as chlorofluorocarbons were creating a hole in the ozone layer. Her research was foundational to the creation of the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement established in the 1980s that phased out products releasing chlorofluorocarbons. Since then, scientists have documented signs that the ozone hole is recovering thanks to these measures.Having witnessed this historical process first-hand, Solomon, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies, is aware of how people can come together to make successful environmental policy happen. Using her story, as well as other examples of success — including combating smog, getting rid of DDT, and more — Solomon draws parallels from then to now as the climate crisis comes into focus in her new book, “Solvable: How we Healed the Earth and How we can do it Again.”Solomon took a moment to talk about why she picked the stories in her book, the students who inspired her, and why we need hope and optimism now more than ever.Q: You have first-hand experience seeing how we’ve altered the Earth, as well as the process of creating international environmental policy. What prompted you to write a book about your experiences?A: Lots of things, but one of the main ones is the things that I see in teaching. I have taught a class called Science, Politics and Environmental Policy for many years here at MIT. Because my emphasis is always on how we’ve actually fixed problems, students come away from that class feeling hopeful, like they really want to stay engaged with the problem.It strikes me that students today have grown up in a very contentious and difficult era in which they feel like nothing ever gets done. But stuff does get done, even now. Looking at how we did things so far really helps you to see how we can do things in the future.Q: In the book, you use five different stories as examples of successful environmental policy, and then end talking about how we can apply these lessons to climate change. Why did you pick these five stories?A: I picked some of them because I’m closer to those problems in my own professional experience, like ozone depletion and smog. I did other issues partly because I wanted to show that even in the 21st century, we’ve actually got some stuff done — that’s the story of the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which is a binding international agreement on some greenhouse gases.Another chapter is on DDT. One of the reasons I included that is because it had an enormous effect on the birth of the environmental movement in the United States. Plus, that story allows you to see how important the environmental groups can be.Lead in gasoline and paint is the other one. I find it a very moving story because the idea that we were poisoning millions of children and not even realizing it is so very, very sad. But it’s so uplifting that we did figure out the problem, and it happened partly because of the civil rights movement, that made us aware that the problem was striking minority communities much more than non-minority communities.Q: What surprised you the most during your research for the book?A: One of the things that that I didn’t realize and should have, was the outsized role played by one single senator, Ed Muskie of Maine. He made pollution control his big issue and devoted incredible energy to it. He clearly had the passion and wanted to do it for many years, but until other factors helped him, he couldn’t. That’s where I began to understand the role of public opinion and the way in which policy is only possible when public opinion demands change.Another thing about Muskie was the way in which his engagement with these issues demanded that science be strong. When I read what he put into congressional testimony I realized how highly he valued the science. Science alone is never enough, but it’s always necessary. Over the years, science got a lot stronger, and we developed ways of evaluating what the scientific wisdom across many different studies and many different views actually is. That’s what scientific assessment is all about, and it’s crucial to environmental progress.Q: Throughout the book you argue that for environmental action to succeed, three things must be met which you call the three Ps: a threat much be personal, perceptible, and practical. Where did this idea come from?A: My observations. You have to perceive the threat: In the case of the ozone hole, you could perceive it because those false-color images of the ozone loss were so easy to understand, and it was personal because few things are scarier than cancer, and a reduced ozone layer leads to too much sun, increasing skin cancers. Science plays a role in communicating what can be readily understood by the public, and that’s important to them perceiving it as a serious problem.Nowadays, we certainly perceive the reality of climate change. We also see that it’s personal. People are dying because of heat waves in much larger numbers than they used to; there are horrible problems in the Boston area, for example, with flooding and sea level rise. People perceive the reality of the problem and they feel personally threatened.The third P is practical: People have to believe that there are practical solutions. It’s interesting to watch how the battle for hearts and minds has shifted. There was a time when the skeptics would just attack the whole idea that the climate was changing. Eventually, they decided ‘we better accept that because people perceive it, so let’s tell them that it’s not caused by human activity.’ But it’s clear enough now that human activity does play a role. So they’ve moved on to attacking that third P, that somehow it’s not practical to have any kind of solutions. This is progress! So what about that third P?What I tried to do in the book is to point out some of the ways in which the problem has also become eminently practical to deal with in the last 10 years, and will continue to move in that direction. We’re right on the cusp of success, and we just have to keep going. People should not give in to eco despair; that’s the worst thing you could do, because then nothing will happen. If we continue to move at the rate we have, we will certainly get to where we need to be.Q: That ties in very nicely with my next question. The book is very optimistic; what gives you hope?A: I’m optimistic because I’ve seen so many examples of where we have succeeded, and because I see so many signs of movement right now that are going to push us in the same direction.If we had kept conducting business as usual as we had been in the year 2000, we’d be looking at 4 degrees of future warming. Right now, I think we’re looking at 3 degrees. I think we can get to 2 degrees. We have to really work on it, and we have to get going seriously in the next decade, but globally right now over 30 percent of our energy is from renewables. That’s fantastic! Let’s just keep going.Q: Throughout the book, you show that environmental problems won’t be solved by individual actions alone, but requires policy and technology driving. What individual actions can people take to help push for those bigger changes?A: A big one is choose to eat more sustainably; choose alternative transportation methods like public transportation or reducing the amount of trips that you make. Older people usually have retirement investments, you can shift them over to a social choice funds and away from index funds that end up funding companies that you might not be interested in. You can use your money to put pressure: Amazon has been under a huge amount of pressure to cut down on their plastic packaging, mainly coming from consumers. They’ve just announced they’re not going to use those plastic pillows anymore. I think you can see lots of ways in which people really do matter, and we can matter more.Q: What do you hope people take away from the book?A: Hope for their future and resolve to do the best they can getting engaged with it. More

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      in Environment

      Study finds health risks in switching ships from diesel to ammonia fuel

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      As container ships the size of city blocks cross the oceans to deliver cargo, their huge diesel engines emit large quantities of air pollutants that drive climate change and have human health impacts. It has been estimated that maritime shipping accounts for almost 3 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and the industry’s negative impacts on air quality cause about 100,000 premature deaths each year.Decarbonizing shipping to reduce these detrimental effects is a goal of the International Maritime Organization, a U.N. agency that regulates maritime transport. One potential solution is switching the global fleet from fossil fuels to sustainable fuels such as ammonia, which could be nearly carbon-free when considering its production and use.But in a new study, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from MIT and elsewhere caution that burning ammonia for maritime fuel could worsen air quality further and lead to devastating public health impacts, unless it is adopted alongside strengthened emissions regulations.Ammonia combustion generates nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas that is about 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It also emits nitrogen in the form of nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2, referred to as NOx), and unburnt ammonia may slip out, which eventually forms fine particulate matter in the atmosphere. These tiny particles can be inhaled deep into the lungs, causing health problems like heart attacks, strokes, and asthma.The new study indicates that, under current legislation, switching the global fleet to ammonia fuel could cause up to about 600,000 additional premature deaths each year. However, with stronger regulations and cleaner engine technology, the switch could lead to about 66,000 fewer premature deaths than currently caused by maritime shipping emissions, with far less impact on global warming.“Not all climate solutions are created equal. There is almost always some price to pay. We have to take a more holistic approach and consider all the costs and benefits of different climate solutions, rather than just their potential to decarbonize,” says Anthony Wong, a postdoc in the MIT Center for Global Change Science and lead author of the study.His co-authors include Noelle Selin, an MIT professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS); Sebastian Eastham, a former principal research scientist who is now a senior lecturer at Imperial College London; Christine Mounaïm-Rouselle, a professor at the University of Orléans in France; Yiqi Zhang, a researcher at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; and Florian Allroggen, a research scientist in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The research appears this week in Environmental Research Letters.Greener, cleaner ammoniaTraditionally, ammonia is made by stripping hydrogen from natural gas and then combining it with nitrogen at extremely high temperatures. This process is often associated with a large carbon footprint. The maritime shipping industry is betting on the development of “green ammonia,” which is produced by using renewable energy to make hydrogen via electrolysis and to generate heat.“In theory, if you are burning green ammonia in a ship engine, the carbon emissions are almost zero,” Wong says.But even the greenest ammonia generates nitrous oxide (N2O), nitrogen oxides (NOx) when combusted, and some of the ammonia may slip out, unburnt. This nitrous oxide would escape into the atmosphere, where the greenhouse gas would remain for more than 100 years. At the same time, the nitrogen emitted as NOx and ammonia would fall to Earth, damaging fragile ecosystems. As these emissions are digested by bacteria, additional N2O  is produced.NOx and ammonia also mix with gases in the air to form fine particulate matter. A primary contributor to air pollution, fine particulate matter kills an estimated 4 million people each year.“Saying that ammonia is a ‘clean’ fuel is a bit of an overstretch. Just because it is carbon-free doesn’t necessarily mean it is clean and good for public health,” Wong says.A multifaceted modelThe researchers wanted to paint the whole picture, capturing the environmental and public health impacts of switching the global fleet to ammonia fuel. To do so, they designed scenarios to measure how pollutant impacts change under certain technology and policy assumptions.From a technological point of view, they considered two ship engines. The first burns pure ammonia, which generates higher levels of unburnt ammonia but emits fewer nitrogen oxides. The second engine technology involves mixing ammonia with hydrogen to improve combustion and optimize the performance of a catalytic converter, which controls both nitrogen oxides and unburnt ammonia pollution.They also considered three policy scenarios: current regulations, which only limit NOx emissions in some parts of the world; a scenario that adds ammonia emission limits over North America and Western Europe; and a scenario that adds global limits on ammonia and NOx emissions.The researchers used a ship track model to calculate how pollutant emissions change under each scenario and then fed the results into an air quality model. The air quality model calculates the impact of ship emissions on particulate matter and ozone pollution. Finally, they estimated the effects on global public health.One of the biggest challenges came from a lack of real-world data, since no ammonia-powered ships are yet sailing the seas. Instead, the researchers relied on experimental ammonia combustion data from collaborators to build their model.“We had to come up with some clever ways to make that data useful and informative to both the technology and regulatory situations,” he says.A range of outcomesIn the end, they found that with no new regulations and ship engines that burn pure ammonia, switching the entire fleet would cause 681,000 additional premature deaths each year.“While a scenario with no new regulations is not very realistic, it serves as a good warning of how dangerous ammonia emissions could be. And unlike NOx, ammonia emissions from shipping are currently unregulated,” Wong says.However, even without new regulations, using cleaner engine technology would cut the number of premature deaths down to about 80,000, which is about 20,000 fewer than are currently attributed to maritime shipping emissions. With stronger global regulations and cleaner engine technology, the number of people killed by air pollution from shipping could be reduced by about 66,000.“The results of this study show the importance of developing policies alongside new technologies,” Selin says. “There is a potential for ammonia in shipping to be beneficial for both climate and air quality, but that requires that regulations be designed to address the entire range of potential impacts, including both climate and air quality.”Ammonia’s air quality impacts would not be felt uniformly across the globe, and addressing them fully would require coordinated strategies across very different contexts. Most premature deaths would occur in East Asia, since air quality regulations are less stringent in this region. Higher levels of existing air pollution cause the formation of more particulate matter from ammonia emissions. In addition, shipping volume over East Asia is far greater than elsewhere on Earth, compounding these negative effects.In the future, the researchers want to continue refining their analysis. They hope to use these findings as a starting point to urge the marine industry to share engine data they can use to better evaluate air quality and climate impacts. They also hope to inform policymakers about the importance and urgency of updating shipping emission regulations.This research was funded by the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium. More