News

February 1 2017
Atmospheres, Oceans and Planetary Studies on Display at AGU
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Lauren Hinkel

Over the week of December 12th, members of MIT’s PAOC attended the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) 49th annual Fall Meeting in San Francisco.The event is the world’s largest Earth and space science...

January 30 2017
Explained: Greenhouse gases
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David L. Chandler | MIT News Office

Carbon dioxide isn’t the only one that matters, and the gases vary widely in potency and duration.When hearing the words “greenhouse gas,” most people think immediately of carbon dioxide. This is inde...

January 30 2017
Solomon is 2017 National Academy of Sciences Medalist
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Helen Hill | EAPS News

Susan Solomon, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will receive the 2017 National Academy of Sciences, Arthur L. Day Prize and...

January 26 2017
EAPS Welcomes Inaugural Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow
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Helen Hill | EAPS News

The Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences is delighted to welcome exoplanetary scientist Dr. Jason Dittmann, one of four inaugural 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellows announced today by...

January 26 2017
Celebrating Pauline Morrow Austin: A Founder of Radar Meteorology
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Lauren Hinkel

MIT Faculty, friends and family of Mrs. Austin gathered to remember her life and commemorate her contributions to science with the unveiling of an exhibit in EAPS.Modern meteorology would not be what ...

January 24 2017
A Persistent Haze
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Mark Dwortzan | MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change

Study assesses impact of fire aerosols on visibility and air quality in Southeast Asia. The skies above Southeast Asia are often dimmed by a persistent haze, due largely to high concentrations of...

January 24 2017
On Addressing Global Change Science
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Bernadette Esposito | MIT ILP Ron Prinn directs MIT's Center for Global Change Science and co-directs its Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Among other things these groups are running the Advanced Global At...
January 17 2017
Observing and modeling the Arctic Ocean and Sea Ice: A Meeting in Woods Hole
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Lauren Hinkel Last November, a group of MIT researchers joined scientists from around the world to attend the fifth meeting of the Forum for Arctic Modeling & Synthesis (FAMOS) at the Woods Hole Oceanographic I...
January 17 2017
Study Tracks “Memory” of Soil Moisture
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David L. Chandler | MIT News Office First year of data from SMAP satellite provides new insights for weather, agriculture, and climate.The top 2 inches of topsoil on all of Earth’s landmasses contains an infinitesimal fraction of the pl...
January 12 2017
Exoplanets and the Search for Habitable Worlds
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Sara Seager For thousands of years people have wondered, “Are there planets like Earth?” “Are they common?” “Do any have signs of life?”Today astronomers are poised to answer these ancient questions. We have foun...
January 11 2017
Modeling Plausible Futures
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Mark Dwortzan | MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change MIT research scientist C. Adam Schlosser assesses long-term risks to regional water and energy systems.Last spring, MIT research scientist C. Adam Schlosser, who serves as deputy director of the MIT J...
January 10 2017
Pauline Austin: Celebrating a Pioneer of Weather Radar
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Lauren Hinkel Made possible by a generous gift, a new, permanent exhibit was unveiled in December, honoring the life and achievements of Pauline M. Austin, PhD ‘42, who served as Director of MIT’s Weather Radar Lab...
January 10 2017
Study Finds More Extreme Storms Ahead for California
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Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office New technique predicts frequency of heavy precipitation with global warming.On Dec. 11, 2014, a freight train of a storm steamed through much of California, deluging the San Francisco Bay Area with th...
January 10 2017
Short-Lived Greenhouse Gases Cause Centuries of Sea-Level Rise
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Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office Through warming effects, methane and other gases impact rising seas long after leaving the atmosphere.Even if there comes a day when the world completely stops emitting greenhouse gases into the atmos...
January 2 2017
Students, Academics, and Entrepreneurs Join Forces to Tackle the Future of Water Utilities
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Carolyn Schmitt | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Fifth annual MIT Water Summit brings together interdisciplinary panelists to give multiple perspectives on major issues surrounding the water sector.Read this story in MIT News.Turn on the faucet and ...
December 19 2016
New study sets oxygen-breathing limit for ocean’s hardiest organisms
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Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office Bacteria can survive in marine environments that are almost completely starved of oxygen. Around the world, wide swaths of open ocean are nearly depleted of oxygen. Not quite dead zones, they are...
December 10 2016
The World Sees Me as the One Who Will Find Another Earth
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Lauren Hinkel In an in-depth piece for The New York Times Magazine, writer Chris Jones spotlights MIT Prof. and astrophysicist Sara Seager’s journey in searching for an Earthlike exoplanet. Jones writes t...
November 28 2016
Climate Models May Be Overestimating the Cooling Effect of Wildfire Aerosols
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Mark Dwortzan | MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change Accounting for year-to-year variability enables more accurate projections of climate change and its impactsWhether intentionally set to consume agricultural waste or naturally ignited in forests or pe...
November 23 2016
Saharan Dust in the Wind
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Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office Scientists find huge reduction in African dust plume led to more Saharan monsoons 11,000 years ago.Read this story in MIT News.Every year, trade winds over the Sahara Desert sweep up huge plumes of mi...
November 18 2016
Living in the Future
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Lauren Hinkel Scientists from MIT and Boston University explore how well early science fiction in movies were able to predict today's technological advances and the culture around which it's based.Since the early d...
November 11 2016
Big Ice, Big Science
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Lauren Hinkel Richard Alley delivers the 2016 Carlson Lecture on the physics of glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland, and Boston and how ice sheets capture a history of the world’s climate.Two-miles thick and a contin...
November 1 2016
Forecasting the Head of the Charles
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Helen Hill | EAPS News Not the winners: The weather! For the third year in a row, Costa Christopoulos '17 provides local, fine-scale weather forecasting support for this beloved annual, international, two-day regatta on the...
October 25 2016
Fall 2016 in PAOC
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Lauren Hinkel With the semester in full swing, PAOC members are enjoying several new, engaging and fun events happening in the department.  The PAOC Retreat (9/30 – 10/2/16) The weekend of September 30th ...
October 25 2016
2015 & 2016 Rossby Awards Announced
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Lauren Hinkel Jill McDermott '15 and Joern Callies '16 have been awarded the Rossby Prize for their respective theses.Remembered as one of the major figures in the founding of the modern dynamical study of the atmo...
October 25 2016
Discovering Extreme Weather
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Lauren Hinkel Incoming freshmen experience life in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheres and Planetary Sciences through weather and climate experiments and a hike up Mt. Washington during the 2016 Discovering EAPS...
September 27 2011
Spitzer Detects a Steaming Super-Earth Eclipsing Its Star NASA news brief Research by postdoc Brice-Olivier Demory provides surprising new details about a supersized and superheated version of Earth called 55 Cancri e
September 27 2011
Ecology of Nitrogen Fixers in the Pacific Ocean Ben Ward Darwin Project researchers have been investigating the large scale distribution of diazotrophs in the Pacific Ocean.
September 26 2011
New Website Helen Hill The Lorenz Center goes online.
September 14 2011
News and World Report College Rankings Emily Finn for MIT News MIT continues to lead in Earth Science graduate programs
September 13 2011
Psychotherapy for Phytoplankton Erin Bertrand for Oceanus/ The WHOI Newsletter Life can be stressful out there in the microscopic marine world
September 13 2011
New Faculty David McGee joins PAOC.
September 13 2011
Breene Professorship Raffaele Ferrari names Breene F. Kerr Professor of Oceanography
September 12 2011
Marking 9-11 The Green Building, last night.
September 6 2011
PAOC administration change Beth MacEachran takes over from Kristen Barilaro as PAOC administrator
August 31 2011
A new way to model urban air pollution Allison Crimmins for the MIT News Office Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change report on improved methods to model atmospheric aerosols
August 30 2011
August 29 2011
Seeing Irene as Harbinger of a Change in Climate by Justin Gillis for the New York Times Kerry Emanuel talks to the NYT about Irene.
August 26 2011
Why are hurricane forecasts still so rough? Kerry Emanuel talks to CNN about the challenge of hurricane forecasting
August 18 2011
CGCS gets a facelift. The MIT Center for Global Change Science website gets a sleek new look.
August 16 2011
Who's who? Who's new? PAOC welcomes new postdoc. Daniel Goldberg
August 16 2011
Breathing new life into Earth MIT News Office - Jennifer Chu New research shows evidence of early oxygen on our planet.
August 10 2011
On thin ice Emily Finn, MIT News Office According to Postdoc. Pierre Rampal and co-authors the most recent global climate report fails to capture the reality of the changing Arctic seascape.
August 5 2011
More about those tall trees BBC News Grad. student Chris Kempes speaks to the BBC about his research.
August 4 2011
Playing with Mercury Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change A new game, co-written by Noelle Selin, is designed to teach the role of science in policy making
August 2 2011
Congratulations Dr. Lee PAOC congratulates newest doctoral graduate Eunjee Lee.
July 20 2011
Ocean Dynamics and the Carbon Cycle PAOC Senior Research Scientist Mick Follows has co-authored a new biogeochemistry text book
July 19 2011
Stellar eclipse gives glimpse of exoplanet MIT News Office - Jennifer Chu Seager and Demorey confirm dimensions of "super-Earth" 55 Cancri e
July 18 2011
Exoplanets Floating Freely, Without A Star NPR Sara Seager speaks to NPR's Science Friday