Climate change

MIT scientists have found that the Australian wildfires in 2019 and 2020 unleashed remnants of chlorine-containing molecules in the stratosphere, expanding the ozone hole and suggesting that more frequent wildfires could threaten the ozone hole’s recovery, reports Dyani Lewis for Nature. “It’s like a race,” says Prof. Susan Solomon. “Does the chlorine decay out of the stratosphere fast enough in the next, say, 40–50 years that the likely increase in intense and frequent wildfires doesn’t end up prolonging the ozone hole?”

Writing for Fast Company, Visiting Scientist Priya Donti examines how “scientists are increasingly looking to AI to help us predict the weather, and some of the most promising approaches come from blending AI with existing scientific knowledge.” Donti notes that a “combination of innovative technology and human wisdom is the best way to harness AI to help us tackle the challenges of the future, especially climate change.”

MIT researchers have developed a new two-step electrochemical process to remove carbon dioxide out of seawater, reports John Fialka for E&E News.  The new approach “cuts energy costs and expensive membranes used to collect CO2 to the point where merchant ships that run on diesel power could collect enough CO2 to offset their emissions,” Fialka writes.  

Prof. Kerry Emanuel and First Street Foundation have found that based on warming climate conditions and patterns, future storms will increase in intensity and travel farther north up the East Coast, reports Leslie Kaufman and Eric Roston for Bloomberg.

Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with CNN reporters Ella Nilsen and Renée Rigdon about future hurricane trends. “The bottom line is the models that are being used by the existing [catastrophe] modeling industry are based strictly on historical statistics,” says Emanuel. “The historical record isn’t very long, and it isn’t very good when you get back to before 1970.”

Visiting scientist Judah Cohen speaks with Boston.com reporter Eli Curwin about how a combination of more accurate data collection, precise weather models, and accessible forecast predictions make it unlikely that Massachusetts residents would be surprised again by a storm like the infamous Blizzard of ‘78. “The satellites, the ships, the weather stations, weather balloons used to integrate and assimilate all that data are much better than they used to be,” says Cohen.

Forbes reporter Jeff McMahon spotlights visiting scientist Judah Cohen for his research examining the connection between Arctic snow cover and sea ice to cold air intrusions in the United States during the month of February. “December has certainly been warming if you look at the U.S.,” sayscCohen. But “February, going back to 1979—so quite a few years now—we're actually seeing in the center of the U.S. a very distinctive cooling trend.”

Boston Globe reporter Scott Kirsner spotlights Boston as a potential leader in climate technology for their “incubator spaces like Greentown Labs in Somerville and The Engine in Cambridge.”

Prof. Steven Barrett speaks with New York Times reporter Paige McClanahan about the pressing need to make air travel more sustainable and his research exploring the impact of contrails on the planet’s temperature. “Eliminating contrails is quite a big lever on mitigating the climate impact of aviation,” said Barrett.

Bloomberg reporter Akshat Rathi spotlights Sublime Systems, an MIT startup developing new technology to produce low-carbon cement. “Sublime’s solution involves splitting the cement-making process into two steps,” explains Rathi. “The first step is to make calcium—the key element in limestone—in a form that’s ready to chemically react with silicon—the key element in sand. Sublime reduces energy use and carbon emissions in this step by avoiding limestone and using electricity, rather than coal-fired heat.”

Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Emeritus Ernest Moniz writes that the National Ignition Facility’s fusion energy advancement “is exciting because when the journey from science demonstration to a commercially viable power plant is completed, the electricity grid will be revolutionized.” Moniz continues, “To meet widely accepted climate objectives, we must double the clock speed of the clean energy innovation process.”

Forbes has named Commonwealth Fusion Systems one of the biggest tech innovations and breakthroughs of 2022, reports Bernard Marr. “Commonwealth Fusion Systems is now working with MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center on plans to build a factory that can mass-produce components for the first commercial fusion reactors,” writes Marr.

Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with Bloomberg reporter Kyle Stock about the carbon impact of electric vehicles. “On average, your emissions are substantially lower if you go for the full electric [vehicle],” says Trancik. “But we could probably think of extreme edge cases where a hybrid is just as good.”

Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman spotlights how The Engine has “backed a number of promising climate-tech startups” and has “helped attract many other investors to climate tech.” Additionally “three-quarters of startups backed by The Engine had a founder or chief executive from an underrepresented minority group, and 44 percent had a woman in one of those roles,” Pressman notes. “From our point of view, it is unacceptable not to believe that people of very diverse backgrounds should be the next founders,” says Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner of The Engine.

Prof. Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, speaks with NPR host Rob Schmitz about fusion energy and its impact on climate and energy sustainability. “So in fusion, what you're doing is literally fusing or pushing together these hydrogen atoms,” explains Whyte. “They turn into helium. This is what happens in our sun as well, too. And when that happens, that can release large amounts of net energy.”