News & Media: Earth Systems

Research in Southeast Asia quantifies how much wildfire smoke hurts peoples’ moods; finds the effect is greater when fires originate in other countries (MIT News)

Scientists quantify a previously overlooked driver of human-related mercury emissions (MIT News) (Coverage: WFXT(Fox)) 

Richard Lester describes an emerging new initiative that will back climate efforts at the Institute and find outside partnerships to drive actionable innovation (MIT News) (Related: Letter to the MIT Community)

MIT delegates share observations and insights from the largest-ever UN climate conference (MIT Office of the Vice President for Research) (Related: MIT Joint Program at COP28)

The award recognizes Solomon’s contributions to understanding ozone depletion and the creation of the Montreal Protocol (MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences)

The climate consequences could be serious, MIT Joint Program Founding Co-Director Emeritus Henry Jacoby and co-authors warn (The Hill)

Using New York as a test case, the model predicts flooding at the level experienced during Hurricane Sandy will occur roughly every 30 years by the end of this century (MIT News)

New advisory panel to provide essential guidance on current climate data best practices and needs (Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs)

To know if bioenergy is truly a low-carbon resource, we must count emissions from growing, transporting, and processing the associated crops, check whether those crops were replanted, and add in any emissions from creating farmland to grow more of them. (MIT Climate Portal) 

Temperatures will likely stop rising in a few years or decades—but it could take centuries for them to fall to the levels humans enjoyed before we started burning fossil fuels (MIT Climate Portal)