Earth and atmospheric sciences

Prof. Richard Binzel talks with Meghan Bartels of Scientific American about the importance of studying Asteroid Apophis – a sizeable space rock that will near Earth within “one tenth of the Earth-moon distance” in 2029. “It’s an incredibly rare event that an asteroid like Apophis would hit the Earth, but it’s better to be knowledgeable than to [be] caught unaware,” says Binzel, a planetary scientist Bartels notes has “spent years raising awareness about the scientific opportunities of the 2029 flyby.” 

Prof. Richard Binzel organized a centennial celebration for the Johnstown meteorite – a meteorite that was seen crashing into Earth on July 6, 1924 in Weld County, Colorado, and later “became a link to understanding a whole class of meteorites,” reports Elizabeth Gamillo for Astronomy. “Binzel describes the Johnstown rock not as the meteorite that launched a thousand ships, but one that instead launched one major mission to the asteroid belt,” writes Gamillo. 

A research group led by postdoctoral associate Minde An analyzed China’s greenhouse gas emissions over the past decade, finding a substantial increase thought to be primarily driven by aluminum production, reports Ellen McNally for The Guardian. The researchers, writes McNally, say these levels could be reduced “with technological innovation and incorporation of the aluminum industry into the carbon market, or a national carbon trading scheme allowing emitters to buy or sell emission credits.” 

Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with New York Times reporter Christopher Kuo about the expectations for the upcoming hurricane season. When discussing Hurricane Beryl, Emanuel says “usually the June and July storms are relatively benign. They don’t get up to full strength, so it’s very rare to have this.” 

Prof. Richard Binzel speaks with Popular Science reporter Briley Lewis about how frequently asteroids come close to Earth. "I would be worried if we weren’t taking the asteroid survey challenge seriously,” says Binzel. "NASA and its funding sources are stepping up to the adult responsibility of doing the necessary searching to make sure our asteroid future is secure.” 

Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with Scientific American reporter Chelsea Harvey about the future of hurricane forecasting and preparations. “I can’t predict the future, but I’m optimistic that things will get better,” says Emanuel. “And you’ll see people moving away from risky places, which is already beginning to happen. And those who elect to stay [will be] paying a lot of insurance or retrofitting houses to be built stronger.”

Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein about this year’s Atlantic hurricane season. “This year, there’s also a significant difference between water temperature and upper air temperature throughout the tropics,” writes Borenstein. “The Atlantic relative to the rest of the tropics is as warm as I’ve seen,” says Emanuel.  

MIT scientists have developed a new model to analyze movements across the Antarctic Ice Sheet, “a critical step in understanding the potential speed and severity of sea level rise,” writes Ava Berger for The Boston Globe. “The flow of glaciers is really the thing that could lead to catastrophic sea level rise scenarios,” explains Prof. Brent Minchew. The findings take “a really big and important step toward understanding what the future is going to look like.”  

Science reporter Paul Voosen spotlights Tropics “a four-CubeSat mission launched by NASA last year” and led by Lincoln Laboratory Fellow William (Bill) Blackwell. The mission has “yielded unprecedented observations of the evolution of hurricanes cores,” writes Voosen. 

BBC Science Focus reporter Alex Hughes spotlights a new study by MIT scientists that suggests more heavy snowfall and rain linked to climate change could increasingly contribute to earthquakes worldwide. “The researchers made these conclusions based on how weather patterns in northern Japan have seemingly contributed to a new 'swarm' of earthquakes,” writes Hughes, “a pattern of multiple, ongoing quakes – that is thought to have begun in 2020.”

A new study conducted by MIT researchers suggests “heavy snowfall could be a factor in triggering swarms of earthquakes,” reports Evan Bush for NBC News. "Those big snowfall events seem to correlate well with the start of these big earthquake swarms," says Prof. William Frank. "We shouldn’t forget the climate itself can also play a role in changing the stress state at depth where earthquakes are happening." 

Scientists from MIT and the University of Oxford have discovered that an ancient sequence of rocks found in Isua, Greenland have “a magnetic field strength of at least 15 microteslas or higher compared to the modern magnetic field of 30 microteslas,” reports David Bressan for Forbes. “These results provide the oldest estimate of the strength of Earth’s magnetic field derived from whole rock samples,” writes Bressan.

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that a sequence of rocks from the Isua Supracrustal Belt in Greenland contain “an ironclad record of the early Earth’s magnetic field,” reports Keith Cooper for Space.com. “The new results from the Greenland rocks are considered more reliable because, for the first time, they are based on entire iron-bearing rocks (rather than individual mineral crystals) to derive the primordial field strength,” explains Cooper. “Therefore, the sample offers the first solid measure of not only the strength of Earth's ancient magnetic field, but also of the timing of when the magnetic field originally appeared.”

Prof. William Frank speaks with New York Times reporter Katrina Miller about the recent earthquake in the Northeast, and whether the event was caused by motion between the Earth’s tectonic plates. “It’s not quite as obvious, because there is no tectonic plate boundary that is active,” explains Frank. He noted that fault lines from past tectonic plate activity are located around the world, explaining that “some of these faults can still be storing stress and be closer to failure, and it can just require a little bit more to push it over the edge.”

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have proposed a new method to look for primordial black holes (PMBs), reports Jackie Appel for Popular Mechanics. “If there are as many as the team thinks there should be, and they interact with gravity as we expect them to, they should be zooming around in a way that some of them should pass close by various objects in our solar system – including Earth,” explains Appel. “And if that happens, it should actually be enough to disturb the natural orbits of these objects in a way that we can measure.”