News

September 29 2014
The 2014 PAOC Retreat: Cape Cod
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Genevieve Wanucha The faculty, graduate students, post-docs and staff of MIT’s Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate (PAOC) begin each year with a retreat supported by the Houghton Fund. The 2014 PAOC Retreat too...
September 10 2014
Where time stands still, ideas travel generations
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Genevieve Wanucha The traditions of chalkboard mathematics, mentorship, and ample time to think make the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics program a summer school like no other.***It’s been another summer of intense lear...
August 27 2014
Snowfall in a warmer world
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Jennifer Chu/MIT News Study finds big snowstorms will still occur in the Northern Hemisphere following global warming.*If ever there were a silver lining to global warming, it might be the prospect of milder winters. After...
August 18 2014
Broadening the 'scope' of microbial oceanography
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Genevieve Wanucha for Oceans at MIT With an infusion of private funds, MIT researchers and collaborators will break new ground in the study of marine microbes at the legendary field site Station ALOHA.***The Simons Foundation, a New Yor...
July 20 2014
Seeing Beyond the Clouds
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Genevieve Wanucha Researchers In the Aerosol and Cloud Lab at MIT are perfecting ice cloud chamber methodology for future generations. A new instrument, the SPectrometer for Ice Nuclei (SPIN), will ultimately clarify h...
June 17 2014
Weston Middle School Visit
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Lodovica Illari Weston Midlle School Visits PAOC.A group of middle school students (6th grade) from the Weston Public schools visited PAOC, as part of their annual trip to MIT. Lodovica Illari, Allison Wing and grad ...
June 15 2014
The Rossby Award goes to Jessica Fitzsimmons and Chris Kempes
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Genevieve Wanucha Jessica Fitzsimmons, PhD '13, and Chris Kempes, PhD '13, have won the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Award for their outstanding PAOC PhD theses.Jessica Fitzsimmons completed her PhD thesis The Marine Biogeochemi...
June 2 2014
Solving the puzzle of ice age climates
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Genevieve Wanucha for MIT News MIT researchers look to the Southern Ocean for an explanation of the “Last Glacial Maximum.” The paleoclimate record for the last ice age — a time 21,000 years ago called the “Last Glacial Maximum” (L...
May 8 2014
Susan Solomon will lead MIT's New Initiative on the Environment
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David Chandler/MIT News Multidisciplinary program, to be led by Susan Solomon, will encourage collaborations among researchers in different fields.Read on MIT NewsMIT has announced a major new campuswide initiative to promot...
April 23 2014
How the Ocean Reins in Global Warming
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Genevieve Wanucha for Oceans at MIT The ocean plays a critical role in climate change, especially in setting the climate's response to increasing anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. As excess heat accumulates in various parts o...
April 7 2014
Flight Path: Into the Volcanic Plume
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Genevieve Wanucha Researchers in EAPS are using small unmanned aircraft systems to better understand environmental phenomena. Their current target is the dangerous plume billowing from an active volcano.***In the thick...
April 3 2014
Ancient whodunit may be solved: The microbes did it!
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David L. Chandler | MIT News Office Methane-producing microbes may be responsible for the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history.Evidence left at the crime scene is abundant and global: Fossil remains show that sometime around 252 m...
February 27 2014
A Gold Medal in Oceanography
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Genevieve Wanucha for Oceans at MIT John Marshall, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography, recently accepted the 2014 Sverdrup Gold Medal of the American Meteorological Society for his "fundamental insights into  water mass ...
February 21 2014
At the Lorenz Center, Water Unites Leaders in Climate Sciences
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Genevieve Wanucha for Oceans at MIT The first Lorenz Center scientific workshop, “Water in the Climate System,” was held February 10-12, 2014 at the MIT Endicott House in Dedham, Massachusetts.Water has a lot of say in how Earth’s clima...
February 14 2014
A Brave New Ocean World
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Genevieve Wanucha for Oceans at MIT After 20 years of work, the new high-resolution virtual ocean, the MITgcm, is advancing science from theoretical fluid dynamics to marine ecology.“A picture’s worth a thousand words” is the first thin...
February 1 2014
Weathering the 2014 IAP
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Genevieve Wanucha It’s been a bone-chilling two weeks here in Cambridge during MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP), and thanks to Course 12.310 ‘An Introduction to Weather Forecasting,’ twenty new amateur forecas...
December 19 2013
Unlocking the Secrets of Starlight in the Search for Another Earth
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Genevieve Wanucha When a planet outside our Solar System, or exoplanet, is big enough and orbits tightly enough around a star that’s bright enough, it’s an astronomer’s dream. That’s because it’s possible to find that ...
November 24 2013
“Let’s Just Do Science:” The Origins of the Graduate Climate Conference
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Genevieve Wanucha for Oceans at MIT Sixteen graduate students in MIT’s Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate (PAOC) have settled back to work after organizing and leading the 7th Graduate Climate Conference (GCC), which took place...
November 19 2013
New Oceans Faculty Positions Shine Spotlight on PAOC
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Genevieve Wanucha for Oceans at MIT September’s here, and classes in MIT’s Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate (PAOC) have begun. Faculty, post docs, researchers, and graduate students continue to explore the ocean on computers,...
November 18 2013
“We Can and We Must:” Drew Shindell on Air Pollution and Climate Change Action
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Genevieve Wanucha for Oceans at MIT On Monday October 21, climatologist Drew Shindell came up from New York City’s NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) to give the 13th Annual Henry W. Kendall Memorial Lecture, which filled n...
November 18 2013
The 2013 PAOC Retreat: Sun and Science on Jiminy Peak
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Genevieve Wanucha MIT’s Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate (PAOC) oversees a broad program of education and research in atmospheric, oceanic, and climate sciences in The Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and P...
July 19 2013
How to Spot a Mass Extinction Event
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Helen Hill   How to Spot a Mass Extinction Event Funded by the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) – Global Seed Funds – Spain, members of the Summons’ group carried out a...
June 25 2013
A Woman, a Mountain, a Quest to Map Climate Change
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alum.mit.edu On a mountaintop in Rwanda, Katherine Potter is helping to put Africa on the climate change grid. She is Katherine Potter PhD ’11, the principal investigator for the new Rwanda Climate Observatory. Wo...
June 11 2013
Chaos at 50
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Physics Today Fifty years have passed since Edward Lorenz published his discovery of the surprising behavior we now know as chaos. With a simple, three-equation weather model, Lorenz demonstrated that even ful...
June 10 2013
400 ppm CO2? Add Other GHGs, and It’s Equivalent to 478 ppm
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Oceans at MIT Atmospheric chemist and climate scientist Ron Prinn discusses the real issues around 400 ppm of atmospheric CO₂.Read this story at Oceans at MITWhat is so significant about this 400-ppm reading?T...