Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences

By studying the remanent magnetizations in ancient meteorites, an MIT team has determined that the solar nebula — the vast of disc of gas and dust that ultimately gave rise to the solar system — lasted around 3 to 4 million years.

Scientists estimate solar nebula’s lifetime

Study finds the swirling gas disk disappeared within the solar system’s first 4 million years.

February 9, 2017

Celebrating Pauline Morrow Austin, a founder of radar meteorology

MIT faculty, friends, and family gathered to remember Austin's life and commemorate her contributions to science with the unveiling of an exhibit in EAPS.

January 31, 2017

“There’s no question that carbon dioxide is the biggest contributor to human-caused climate change, so that’s the big focus of mitigation efforts. But there are a number of others that are also significant,” says Jessika Trancik, the Atlantic Richfield Career Development Associate Professor in Energy Studies at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Explained: Greenhouse gases

Carbon dioxide isn’t the only one that matters, and the gases vary widely in potency and duration.

January 30, 2017

Jason Dittmann named an inaugural Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow

Fellowship to provide scientists the opportunity to conduct theoretical, observational, and experimental research in planetary astronomy.

January 26, 2017

The SMAP observations are providing an unprecedented level of detailed, worldwide information on the amount of water in the top 2 inches (5 centimeters) of soil, collected globally every two to three days.

Study tracks “memory” of soil moisture

First year of data from SMAP satellite provides new insights for weather, agriculture, and climate.

January 16, 2017

Researchers report that warming from short-lived compounds — greenhouse gases such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons, that linger in the atmosphere for just a year to a few decades — can cause sea levels to rise for hundreds of years after the pollutants have been cleared from the atmosphere.

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.

January 9, 2017

Left: An artist’s conception of the Lucy spacecraft flying by the Trojan Eurybates — one of the six diverse and scientifically important Trojans asteroids to be studied. Right: Psyche, the first mission to a metal asteroid, will map features, structure, composition, and magnetic field, and examine a landscape unlike anything explored before.

Twin wins for planetary exploration

MIT scientists and alumni well represented on newly announced NASA asteroid missions Psyche and Lucy.

January 5, 2017

MIT scientists have found that extreme precipitation events in California should become more frequent as the Earth’s climate warms over this century.

Study finds more extreme storms ahead for California

New technique predicts frequency of heavy precipitation with global warming.

January 3, 2017

MIT oceanographers have found that some small marine organisms — mostly bacteria — have a surprisingly low limit to the amount of oxygen they need to breathe.

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

Bacteria can survive in marine environments that are almost completely starved of oxygen.

December 19, 2016

A destructive wildfire burned through Canada’s Northern Alberta region, razing neighborhoods in Fort McMurray and displacing tens of thousands of residents.

Climate models may be overestimating the cooling effect of wildfire aerosols

Study finds accounting for year-to-year variability enables more accurate projections of climate change and its impacts.

November 29, 2016

Dust blowing through the Sahara Desert in 2012. Researchers have found that the plume was far less dusty between 5,000 and 11,000 years ago, containing only half the amount of dust that is transported today.

Saharan dust in the wind

Scientists find huge reduction in African dust plume led to stronger Saharan monsoons 11,000 years ago.

November 23, 2016

Left to right: Robert Stoner, deputy director of the MIT Energy Initiative and director of the Tata Center for Technology and Design; Maria Zuber, MIT vice president for research; Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab; and John Fernandez, professor of architecture and director of MIT's Environmental Solutions Initiative.

Forging ahead on climate action

At UN Climate Change Conference, MIT researchers share insights on implementing climate commitments.

November 22, 2016

NASA’s New Horizons team has found evidence of any icy, slushy ocean beneath Pluto’s “heart."

Pluto’s icy, slushy heart

Data from New Horizons mission suggest a water-ice ocean lies beneath Pluto’s heart-shaped basin.

November 16, 2016

A capacity crowd at the New England Aquarium's Omni Theater enjoyed the 2016 John H. Carlson Lecture, "Big Ice: Antarctica, Greenland, and Boston," presented by Penn State University Professor Richard Alley.

Big ice, big science

Richard Alley delivers 2016 Carlson Lecture on the physics of glaciers and how ice sheets capture a history of the world’s climate.

November 14, 2016

Joern Callies and Jill McDermott win Carl-Gustaf Rossby Awards for PhD theses

Awards to recent alumni honor the memory of Carl-Gustaf Rossby, a pioneer in earth and atmospheric sciences.

November 4, 2016

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