A new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that climate change is likely causing more extreme winter weather, reports Hallie Golden for The Guardian. The researchers found that changes in the Arctic brought on by climate change “actually increased the chances of tightly spinning winds above the North Pole, known as the Arctic stratospheric polar vortex, being stretched and thus boosting the chances of extreme weather events in the US and beyond.”
New Scientist reporter Adam Vaughan writes that a new study led by visiting scientist Judah Cohen finds that climate change may be causing more extreme winter weather in North America and Eurasia. “If you expected global warming to help you out with preparing for severe winter weather, our paper says the cautionary tale is: don’t necessarily expect climate change to solve that problem for you,” says Cohen. “This is an unexpected impact from climate change that we didn’t appreciate 20 years ago.”
Prof. Kerry Emanuel discusses how climate change impacts the rapid intensification of storms like Hurricane Ida with Washington Post reporter Sarah Kaplan. “This is exactly the kind of thing we’re going to have to get used to as the planet warms," says Emanuel.
Prof. John Sterman speaks with CNBC reporter Diana Olick about the impacts climate change will have on supply chains and how businesses can prepare. “What you want to do as a company is find ways to cut your emissions that also improve your resilience and generate other benefits for you, so that the risks that you face are lower,” says Sterman.
Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, examines the findings of the IPCC report on climate change in a piece for The Hill, underscoring the need to take more aggressive action to cut carbon emissions. “Fossil fuels raised living standards in the U.S and much of the world," Paltsev writes, "but now the U.S. needs to lead the world with technology and policy options that ultimately will eliminate greenhouse gases from power generation, industry, transportation and other activities."
Vice reporter Becky Ferreira writes that a study by MIT scientists examining extreme climate events in the Earth’s history finds that as the planet warms we could be more susceptible to volatile climate extremes. “I think these results emphasize that Earth's long-term evolution is governed by complex, potentially amplifying mechanisms that we do not yet fully understand,” explains graduate student Constantin Arnscheidt.
Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, speaks with NECN about the IPCC’s new report on climate change. “We have learned that we need to take much more aggressive actions,” says Paltsev. The new report “illustrates that we are passing a lot of thresholds. We now know not just from the modeling, but from the observations, that the situation is quite alarming so we better take action pretty soon.”
Boston Globe correspondent Scott Kirsner spotlights CubicPV, an MIT startup, which is creating solar cells that more efficiently convert sunlight into energy.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Randolph Kirchain, co-director of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, and postdoctoral associate Hessam Azarijafari explore how cool pavements could be used to address urban heat. “If Boston were to properly implement cool pavements, it would reduce its CO2 emissions by 1.5 million tons over 50 years — between 1 and 3 percent of the reductions needed to meet its 2050 carbon neutrality pledge,” they write. “These reductions would come from not just reflectivity, but also from better road quality over time.”
Senior research engineer Howard Herzog speaks with Bloomberg about the challenges facing the carbon capture industry and how we can get to net-zero emissions.
A new study by researchers from MIT and Tulane finds that the MBTA subway network faces the threat of flooding caused by rising sea levels over the new 50 years, reports the Associated Press. “A 100-year storm would completely inundate the Blue Line and large portions of the Red and Orange lines by 2030, researchers found. By 2070, a 100-year storm would flood nearly the entire network.”
A new study by researchers from MIT and Tulane University finds that rising seas have the potential to inundate the MBTA’s network and underscores the importance of fortifying the system’s infrastructure, reports Andrew Brinker for The Boston Globe. “Severe flooding is a grave challenge for the T,” explains graduate student Michael Martello.
MIT researchers have found that while battery and fuel production for electric vehicles creates higher emissions than traditional cars, those emissions are offset by the greater energy efficiency of EVs. “Currently, the electric vehicle in the U.S., on average, would emit about 200 grams of CO2 per mile,” says senior research scientist Sergey Paltsev. “We are projecting that with cleaning up the grid, we can reduce emissions from electric vehicles by 75%, from about 200 (grams) today to about 50 grams of CO2 per mile in 2050.”
Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, emphasizes the importance of reaching net-zero emissions as fast as possible. “By pushing natural gas—which is indeed cleaner than coal, but it’s still a fossil fuel that releases a lot of CO2 and more importantly, a lot of methane—we are actually hurting renewables,” says Paltsev.
Writing for The Hill, Prof. Sanjoy Mitter, Prof. Munther Dahleh, research affiliate Le Xie and their colleagues underscore the need to build a “resilient energy ‘superhighway,’ an electric grid that delivers a wide portfolio of energy supplies to the end users in a reliable manner.” They add that: “Investments are needed both in building the backbone interconnections, as well as in upgrading the ‘last mile’ distribution grid.”