“We are swinging to fossil fuels in ways that couldn't have been imagined a few years ago,” says Professor Michael Greenstone in this New York Times piece by Eduardo Porter. Greenstone argues that fossil fuel innovation has undermined efforts to expand carbon-free energy sources.
Living on Earth reporter Steve Curwood highlights new MIT research that casts doubt on how methane’s global warming power is measured. “Professor Trancik proposes an alternative method of measuring the climate impact, weighting methane as thirty times more destructive than CO2 now,” he reports.
Prof. John Lienhard, head of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS), discusses the new lab with Najlaa Habriri of Asharq Al-Awsat. Habriri calls J-WAFS an "ambitious project to tackle worldwide food and water insecurity."
“A new study has revealed an overlooked trend: tropical cyclone activity is shifting away from the tropics and toward the poles,” writes Andrea Thompson in a Huffington Post piece on new research from MIT Professor Kerry Emanuel.
NPR reporter Scott Neuman writes about how researchers have found that storms are, “migrating out of the tropics, reaching their peak intensity in higher latitudes, where larger populations are concentrated.”
Scientific American reporter David Biello discusses new research that shows that major storms are shifting towards the poles. “The record reveals that peak cyclone location has been shifting toward both poles at a rate of about 35 miles per decade, roughly one-half a degree of latitude,” Biello explains.
A new study co-authored by MIT’s Kerry Emanuel finds that as the Earth’s oceans have warmed, destructive storms have moved further from the equator, writes Jason Samenow for The Washington Post.
Seth Borenstein of The Associated Press reports on the National Climate Assessment released Tuesday. Henry Jacoby, co-director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and a co-author of the report, tells Borenstein, "we're still on the pathway to more damage and danger of the type that are described in great detail in the rest of this report.”
Writing for The Guardian, Sarah Shemkus reports on the MIT Climate CoLab’s approach to tackling climate change. The goal of the lab, a collaborative online community, is to bring together people from around the world to tackle climate change through online contests, Shemkus explains.
The Christian Science Monitor’s Peter Spotts reports on new MIT research that finds volcanoes may be the cause of a recent hiatus in the rise of global surface temperatures.