Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences

Aerospace engineers from MIT have developed a laser sensing technique that can decipher not only where but what kind of space junk may be passing overhead.

Space junk: The cluttered frontier

New laser technique identifies the makeup of space debris, from painted shards to Teflon.

June 19, 2017

Amanda Giang PhD '17 is working to empower local, regional and global decision makers with better policies to minimize impacts of mercury and other long-range persistent pollutants.

Monitoring and mitigating mercury

Amanda Giang PhD '17 models a pollutant’s pathways and helps decision makers craft more effective mitigation policies.

June 14, 2017

A bubble of oxygen emerges from a cyanobacterial mat growing in the lab.

A genomic take on geobiology

Researchers in Greg Fournier’s geobiology lab are seeking to calibrate the ancient history of life on Earth using genomic analysis.

June 5, 2017

Space Systems Engineering students (left to right) Jeremy Stroming, Tori Wuthrich, and Nicholas James compare the properties of stony and iron meteorites.

Project Apophis

Space Systems Engineering students design a close-range mission to a giant asteroid that will fly by Earth in 2029.

May 31, 2017

Left to right: River networks on Mars, Earth, and Titan. Researchers report that Titan, like Mars but unlike Earth, has not undergone any active plate tectonics in its recent past.

Rivers on three worlds tell different tales

Study finds history of Titan’s landscape resembles that of Mars, not Earth

May 18, 2017

MIT teaching assistant Marjorie Cantine lands a drone in Death Valley.

Classroom Earth: Drones over the desert

Professor Kristin Bergmann and her class used innovative technology to explore the sedimentary history of the Carrara Formation in California's Death Valley.

May 16, 2017

“The observations are telling us there will be increases [in extreme rainfall] at almost all latitudes, but if you want to know what’s going to happen at the scale of a continent or smaller, it’s a much more difficult question,” Paul O’Gorman says.

Varied increases in extreme rainfall with global warming

Intensification of extreme rainfall varies from region to region, study shows.

May 15, 2017

This image shows humidity in the lower atmosphere in a global high-resolution model used to study the effect of climate change on weather extremes.

3Q: Refocusing climate research in a new era

Associate Professor Paul O'Gorman describes three questions climate scientists recently suggested should frame the future of climate research.

May 3, 2017

2017 Kendall Lecture speaker Thomas Karl

Correcting the records

Climate data analyst Thomas Karl describes global temperature and precipitation measurement and interpretation in the 16th Henry W. Kendall Memorial Lecture.

April 25, 2017