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MIT News | Sep 11, 2015
Study: Pattern of winners and losers explains U.S. policy on fuel subsidies.
Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office
The politics of climate change are often depicted as a simple battle, between environmentalists and particular industries, over government policy. That’s not wrong, but it’s only a rough sketch of the matter. Now a paper co-authored by MIT economist...
Around Campus
MIT News | Sep 08, 2015
A new study describes how irrigation development modifies local and regional climate.
Kelsey Damrad | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
With approximately 70 percent of all freshwater consumption worldwide used for agriculture, the reliance on large-scale irrigation development continues to spread and ultimately augments crop yields in many regions.
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Around Campus
MIT News | Aug 31, 2015
Vulnerable coastal regions could face storm surges of unprecedented magnitude in the next century
Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
"Grey swan" cyclones — extremely rare tropical storms that are impossible to anticipate from the historical record alone — will become more frequent in the next century for parts of Florida, Australia, and cities along the Persian Gulf, according to a study...
Around Campus
MIT News | Aug 28, 2015
Study explains how rain droplets attract aerosols out of the atmosphere
Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
As a raindrop falls through the atmosphere, it can attract tens to hundreds of tiny aerosol particles to its surface before hitting the ground. The process by which droplets and aerosols attract is coagulation, a natural phenomenon that can act to clear the...
In The News
MIT News | Aug 24, 2015
Paul O'Gorman: Extreme storm modeler
Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
Several winters back, while shoveling out his driveway after a particularly heavy snowstorm, Paul O’Gorman couldn’t help but wonder: How is climate change affecting the Boston region’s biggest snow events?
The question wasn’t an idle one for O’Gorman...
In The News
Link to Article | Aug 12, 2015
New findings show Asia produces twice as much mercury emissions as previously thought.
Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
Once mercury is emitted into the atmosphere from the smokestacks of power plants, the pollutant has a complicated trajectory; even after it settles onto land and sinks into oceans, mercury can be re-emitted back into the atmosphere repeatedly. This so-called...
In The News
Link to Article | Jul 20, 2015
Study finds many species may die out and others may migrate significantly as ocean acidification intensifies.
by Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
Oceans have absorbed up to 30 percent of human-made carbon dioxide around the world, storing dissolved carbon for hundreds of years. As the uptake of carbon dioxide has increased in the last century, so has the acidity of oceans worldwide. Since pre-...
In The News
MIT News | Jun 26, 2015
MIT analysis informs a new EPA report on the effects of curbing climate change.
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Reducing global greenhouse gas emissions could have big benefits in the U.S., according to a report released today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including thousands of avoided deaths from extreme heat, billions of dollars in saved infrastructure expenses, and prevented...
In The News • China Energy & Climate Project
MIT Energy Initiative | Jun 08, 2015
MIT Energy Initiative | China Energy and Climate Project researchers conclude that by designing and implementing aggressive long-term measures now, Chinese policy makers will put the nation on a path to achieve recently pledged emissions reductions with relatively modest impacts on economic growth.
By Nancy W. Stauffer, MIT Energy Initiative
Overview
Researchers from MIT and Tsinghua University in Beijing are collaborating to bring new insights into how China—now the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2)—can reverse the rising trajectory of its CO2...
In The News
Link to Article | Jun 05, 2015
MIT Spectrum interviews MIT alumnus Kenneth Strzepek, who led a nonpartisan panel of 17 experts to investigate the international water debate between Egypt and Ethiopia in the hopes of forging a common solution.
For millennia, Egypt has relied on the Nile River for its agriculture. So Egyptians were understandably upset in 2011 when their upstream neighbor, Ethiopia, announced plans to build a hydroelectric dam that threatened to reduce the flow out of the spigot: the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (...