PAOC Spotlights

Explained: Greenhouse gases

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...

Solomon is 2017 National Academy of Sciences Medalist

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...

EAPS Welcomes Inaugural Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow

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...

Celebrating Pauline Morrow Austin: A Founder of Radar Meteorology

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 ...

A Persistent Haze

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...

On Addressing Global Change Science

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...

Observing and modeling the Arctic Ocean and Sea Ice: A Meeting in Woods Hole

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...

Study Tracks “Memory” of Soil Moisture

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...

Exoplanets and the Search for Habitable Worlds

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...

Modeling Plausible Futures

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...

Pauline Austin: Celebrating a Pioneer of Weather Radar

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...

Study Finds More Extreme Storms Ahead for California

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...

Short-Lived Greenhouse Gases Cause Centuries of Sea-Level Rise

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...

Students, Academics, and Entrepreneurs Join Forces to Tackle the Future of Water Utilities

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 ...

New study sets oxygen-breathing limit for ocean’s hardiest organisms

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...

The World Sees Me as the One Who Will Find Another Earth

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...

Climate Models May Be Overestimating the Cooling Effect of Wildfire Aerosols

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...

Saharan Dust in the Wind

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...

Living in the Future

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...

Big Ice, Big Science

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...

Forecasting the Head of the Charles

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...

Fall 2016 in PAOC

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 ...

2015 & 2016 Rossby Awards Announced

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...

Discovering Extreme Weather

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...

The 2016 PAOC Retreat: Ocean Edge in Brewster, MA

This year’s PAOC retreat to Ocean Edge’s seaside resort in Brewster, MA gave attendees a chance to socialize and relax before the semester’s events began to pick up. Scheduled over the weekend of...