Environment

EGU 2016 General Assembly: Active Planet

How much of a difference will the Paris Agreement make?

MIT study projects end-of-century climate under different scenarios.

April 22, 2016

“Everybody agrees that on geological timescales over hundreds of millions of years, tectonics control the climate, but we didn’t know how to connect this,” says Oliver Jagoutz.

Study: Ancient tectonic activity was trigger for ice ages

Continental shifting may have acted as a natural mechanism for extreme carbon sequestration.

April 18, 2016

All the winners of the 2016 MIT IDEAS Global Challenge, held on April 2.

App that provides “nutrition receipts” for groceries wins IDEAS Global Challenge

Twelve teams competing in social-entrepreneurship competition split $97,500 in cash prizes.

April 4, 2016

“For China, it looks like industrial growth [has the greatest impact on water shortages] as people get wealthier,” Charles Fant says. “In India, population growth has a huge effect. It varies by region.”

Water problems in Asia’s future?

Study finds high risk of severe water stress in Asia by 2050.

March 30, 2016

MIT Energy Initiative and AVANGRID to study the future of the electricity industry

A new collaboration could inform New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision initiative by simulating the impact of distributed resources on the power system.

March 30, 2016

<i>Bacillus subtilis,</i> a commonly studied soil bacteria, survives at much lower cell density when it self-organizes into patches than when it is more evenly spread through its environment, new research by MIT postdoc Christoph Ratzke and Latham Family Career Development Associate Professor of Physics Jeff Gore shows.

Forming patches boosts bacterial life

By clustering, cells can work together to survive challenging environments, MIT researchers show.

March 23, 2016

White House features newly launched MIT Climate CoLab Energy-Water Nexus Contest

MIT Climate CoLab contest featured by the White House on United Nations World Water Day.

March 22, 2016

Janos Pasztor, senior advisor to the U.N. secretary-general on climate change, at one of five daily talks on international climate change negotiations that he presented at MIT.

Getting the world to turn down the heat

Top U.N. climate advisor highlights successes in Paris, challenges ahead.

March 11, 2016

“We hope the MIT community will join us in identifying a range of potential solutions to meet our institutional climate goals,” Don Holmes says.

Crowdsourcing contest to focus on reducing campus emissions

MIT challenges the community to identify cutting-edge solutions to reach carbon reduction goals.

March 10, 2016

“I see environmental issues as the largest existential threat to aviation; however I also see aviation as a critical link in solving worldwide environmental challenges,” John Hansman says.

Q&A: John Hansman on the first global standards for aircraft emissions

Aviation is “a critical link in solving worldwide environmental challenges,” says MIT professor.

March 9, 2016

“It is crucial that MIT seize a leadership role in addressing the urgent issue of climate change, and I believe that this agreement puts us in an even stronger position to lead effectively and successfully,” Maria Zuber says.

Agreement on climate-related action reached by MIT administration and student-led group

Four-part plan signals effort to build on last year’s climate action plan, and an end to months-long protest.

March 3, 2016

Using acoustic data, researchers identified and mapped the calls of diverse marine mammal species in fish spawning grounds on Georges Bank, including (from top right, clockwise): blue (snout only is pictured), humpback, orca, fin, dolphin, sei, pilot, sperm, and minke.

Whales dine with their own kind

Mapping whale calls, researchers find the predators feed in species-specific hotspots.

March 2, 2016

“Without compressibility and gravity, we cannot describe low-frequency sound waves correctly,” Usama Kadri says. “This is one of the reasons why researchers have mostly overlooked acoustic-gravity waves.”

New theory of deep-ocean sound waves may aid tsunami detection

Surface waves can trigger powerful sound waves that race through the deep ocean, study suggests.

March 1, 2016

MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub principal investigators Franz-Josef Ulm and Roland Pellenq and research scientist Mehdi Akbarian run a pavement-vehicle interaction test that simulates a vehicle moving over pavement. The test determines excess fuel consumption induced by pavement material and structural properties.

Well-maintained roadways improve fuel efficiency

Research aims to encourage decision makers to think of infrastructure as part of the solution in a carbon constrained environment.

February 29, 2016

At the edge of an eelgrass bed, rocky sandy sediments appear in the foreground. Organic buildup of sediments under the vegetation can also be seen.

Green eelgrass, blue carbon

MIT Sea Grant is working with several partners to quantify the carbon storage of eelgrass beds in Massachusetts.