CS3 In the News

Maria Gallucci
International Business Times

Climate change could pose an even greater threat to global food production than previously thought, according to new research. Rising temperatures will not only damage heat-sensitive crops – they’ll also increase toxic air pollution, which will harm crops even further.

The study, out this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first to explore how this interaction between warming temperatures and air pollution affects staple crops. Scientists have long known that the two can independently damage crops and reduce yields, but “nobody has looked at these two together,” Colette Heald, one of the co-authors and an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT, said in a statement.

She said the findings highlight the need for stronger air-quality regulations, especially given the looming global food crisis. The world is expected to need about 50 percent more food than it does today by 2050, due to population growth and the increasing demand for cereal-based diets in the developing world. But warming temperatures may reduce global crop yields by about 10 percent over that same period; left unchecked, air pollution could bump that number up even higher, the authors said.

In the past decades, scientists have increasingly focused on studying the potential effects of climate change on all aspects of life, including agriculture. Last week, a separate study by U.S. researchers found that the odds of a reduction in corn and wheat production are 20 times higher than they would be without human-induced global warming. Earlier this year, a United Nations climate change report found that falling agricultural yields would hit impoverished people the hardest.

The earth sciences field in particular has seen a big shift in how researchers study the climate, with chemists, biologists and ecosystems experts collaborating more closely than in the past. “They used to not talk to each other much, but now they have to because of these kind of [climate] impacts,” Amos Tai, an assistant professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and co-author of the Nature Climate Change study, told International Business Times.

For the ozone study, the MIT-affiliated researchers focused on rice, wheat, corn and soy crops, which together account for more than half of the calories that humans consume worldwide. The team observed that warmer temperatures significantly increase production of ozone, a colorless toxic gas, due to the reactions of certain chemical compounds with nitrogen oxides – greenhouse gases that come from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks.

For soybeans, the researchers found that 46 percent of damage was actually caused by increased ozone levels – and not by increased heat, as had been previously thought. About one-quarter of wheat damage and nearly 10 percent of corn damage is primarily due to ozone, while the results for rice were inconclusive, according to the study.

The interaction between temperatures and pollutants varies considerably from region to region, and each crop is affected differently, the report’s authors said. Wheat in all the major production regions is more sensitive to ozone pollution than to higher temperatures, for instance. Corn and soybeans, however, are more vulnerable to high heats.

Government policies will also play a major role in determining the extent of pollution-related crop losses. Under one scenario, the researchers projected that global food production could fall by 15 percent, but when they accounted for large emissions decreases, that figure shrank to a 9 percent drop in food production. In each region, the outcome “will depend on domestic air-pollution policies,” Heald said. “An air-quality cleanup would improve crop yields.”

The United States and parts of Asia – namely South Korea and Japan – will be least affected by the ozone-climate effect, the study found. That’s because “even in the worst-case scenario, which is business-as-usual, we still expect that ozone is going to decrease in the future because of ozone regulations in these particular countries,” Tai said in the phone interview.

China and South Asia, on the other hand, will see the most ozone-related damage to wheat, rice and soybean crops because of the chronically high levels of toxic air pollution. Even corn, which is generally more vulnerable to heat than ozone, will suffer significantly from poor air quality.

Tai said the findings should serve as a wake-up call for the government planners and agricultural experts who are working to protect the world’s food supplies from global warming. Efforts to improve irrigation in sun-scorched regions, or to replace sensitive crops with more resilient varieties, could be less effective if ozone pollution keeps dirtying the air. “If you do not control your ozone, then anything that you do through climate adaptation may not realize the full potential, because ozone will just offset your benefits,” Tai said.

The study is proof that countries should invest more in renewable sources like solar and wind energy and less in pollution-intensive fossil fuels, Denise Mauzerall, a professor of environmental engineering and international affairs at Princeton University, who was not involved in the MIT research, said in a statement. “The increased use of clean energy sources that do not emit greenhouse gases or conventional air pollutants … would be doubly beneficial to global food security, as they do not contribute to either climate change or increased surface-ozone concentrations,” she said.

Megan Rowling
Thomson Reuters Foundation

Controlling air pollution could help curb projected declines in global food supplies, a new study says, suggesting policymakers should consider both climate change and ozone pollution in efforts to ensure the world has enough food.

Scientists have largely neglected the interactions between rising temperatures and ozone pollution, which is known to damage crops. But the complex linkages can be significant, said the study, published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.

It explored the global production of four food staples - rice, wheat, corn and soy - finding that effects will vary between regions, and some crops are more strongly affected by one of the two factors. Wheat is very sensitive to ozone exposure, while corn is more adversely impacted by heat, for example.

Warmer temperatures can increase ozone production, said researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who carried out the study. Ozone is a gas - a form of oxygen - that is explosive and toxic.

Given that farm production is very sensitive to ozone pollution, the study shows "how important it is to think about the agricultural implications of air-quality regulations. Ozone is something that we understand the causes of, and the steps that need to be taken to improve air quality,” said Colette Heald, one of the authors and an MIT associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

In the United States, for example, tougher air quality regulations will likely lead to a sharp drop in ozone pollution, mitigating its impact on crops. In other regions, the outcome will be shaped by domestic air pollution policies, Heald said. “An air-quality cleanup would improve crop yields,” she added.

The researchers found air pollution will play a part in shaping undernourishment in developing countries. Under a pessimistic air quality scenario, the malnutrition rate may increase from 18 to 27 percent by 2050. Under a more optimistic scenario, it would still go up but the increase would be cut almost in half.

Global warming alone may reduce crop yields globally by about 10 percent by 2050, the study said. But under some scenarios, pollution control measures could offset a proportion of the expected declines.

The damage caused by ozone pollution can be hard to identify, because it resembles other plant illnesses, producing flecks on leaves and discoloration, MIT said.

The researchers found, for example, that 46 percent of damage to soybean crops that had previously been attributed to heat was actually caused by increased ozone.

The projections exclude the complex effect of rising levels of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas that could also help stem falls in global food supplies, they noted.

Denise L. Mauzerall, a professor of environmental engineering at Princeton University who was not involved in the study, described the finding that air pollution controls could improve agricultural yields and partially offset the negative effects of climate change on yields as "important".

"The increased use of clean energy sources that do not emit either greenhouse gases or conventional air pollutants, such as wind and solar energy, would be doubly beneficial to global food security, as they do not contribute to either climate change or increased surface-ozone concentrations,” Mauzerall said in a statement.

(Editing by Ros Russell; rosalind.russell@thomsonreuters.com)

By David L. Chandler

Many studies have shown the potential for global climate change to cut food supplies. But these studies have, for the most part, ignored the interactions between increasing temperature and air pollution — specifically ozone pollution, which is known to damage crops.

A new study involving researchers at MIT shows that these interactions can be quite significant, suggesting that policymakers need to take both warming and air pollution into account in addressing food security.

The study looked in detail at global production of four leading food crops — rice, wheat, corn, and soy — that account for more than half the calories humans consume worldwide. It predicts that effects will vary considerably from region to region, and that some of the crops are much more strongly affected by one or the other of the factors: For example, wheat is very sensitive to ozone exposure, while corn is much more adversely affected by heat.

The research was carried out by Colette Heald, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE) at MIT, former CEE postdoc Amos Tai, and Maria van Martin at Colorado State University. Their work is described this week in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Heald explains that while it’s known that both higher temperatures and ozone pollution can damage plants and reduce crop yields, “nobody has looked at these together.” And while rising temperatures are widely discussed, the impact of air quality on crops is less recognized.

The effects are likely to vary widely by region, the study predicts. In the United States, tougher air-quality regulations are expected to lead to a sharp decline in ozone pollution, mitigating its impact on crops. But in other regions, the outcome “will depend on domestic air-pollution policies,” Heald says. “An air-quality cleanup would improve crop yields.”

Overall, with all other factors being equal, warming may reduce crop yields globally by about 10 percent by 2050, the study found. But the effects of ozone pollution are more complex — some crops are more strongly affected by it than others — which suggests that pollution-control measures could play a major role in determining outcomes.

Ozone pollution can also be tricky to identify, Heald says, because its damage can resemble other plant illnesses, producing flecks on leaves and discoloration.

Potential reductions in crop yields are worrisome: The world is expected to need about 50 percent more food by 2050, the authors say, due to population growth and changing dietary trends in the developing world. So any yield reductions come against a backdrop of an overall need to increase production significantly through improved crop selections and farming methods, as well as expansion of farmland.

While heat and ozone can each damage plants independently, the factors also interact. For example, warmer temperatures significantly increase production of ozone from the reactions, in sunlight, of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides. Because of these interactions, the team found that 46 percent of damage to soybean crops that had previously been attributed to heat is actually caused by increased ozone.

Under some scenarios, the researchers found that pollution-control measures could make a major dent in the expected crop reductions following climate change. For example, while global food production was projected to fall by 15 percent under one scenario, larger emissions decreases projected in an alternate scenario reduce that drop to 9 percent.

Air pollution is even more decisive in shaping undernourishment in the developing world, the researchers found: Under the more pessimistic air-quality scenario, rates of malnourishment might increase from 18 to 27 percent by 2050 — about a 50 percent jump; under the more optimistic scenario, the rate would still increase, but that increase would almost be cut in half, they found.

Agricultural production is “very sensitive to ozone pollution,” Heald says, adding that these findings “show how important it is to think about the agricultural implications of air-quality regulations. Ozone is something that we understand the causes of, and the steps that need to be taken to improve air quality.”

Denise L. Mauzerall, a professor of environmental engineering and international affairs at Princeton University who was not involved in this research, says, “An important finding … is that controls on air-pollution levels can improve agricultural yields and partially offset adverse impacts of climate change on yields. Thus, the increased use of clean energy sources that do not emit either greenhouse gases or conventional air pollutants, such as wind and solar energy, would be doubly beneficial to global food security, as they do not contribute to either climate change or increased surface-ozone concentrations.”

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Park Service, and the Croucher Foundation.

Katherine Boehrer
Huffington Post

Ozone pollution, which worsens breathing problems and causes air quality warnings, may compound global warming's damage to the world's food crops, according to a new study.

Ground-level ozone, formed mainly from pollutants emitted by burning fossil fuels for cars, industry and power plants, increases as temperatures rise. That's why air quality warnings are more frequent in hot weather and why global warming has the potential to boost ozone pollution. Once formed, ozone can travel long distances, affecting even remote areas.

The new study, published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change, used models and historical trends to analyze the impact of climate change and ozone on four of the world's major food crops: wheat, rice, maize and soybeans. Ozone can harm plants by slowing photosynthesis and killing cells. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Ground-level ozone causes more damage to plants than all other air pollutants combined.”

The study showed that climate change is likely to reduce crop yields at least 10 percent by 2050 from 2000 levels. When the researchers compared two pollution scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report, they found that ozone would have more complex effects. In a higher ozone pollution scenario the researchers called "pessimistic," crop yields would decrease 15 percent by 2050. But in an "intermediate" ozone scenario, crop yields would fall 9 percent.

"The climate projections are quite consistent" in the two scenarios, one of the study's authors, Colette Heald of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Huffington Post. But "the future of ozone pollution is very different ... leading to either offsetting or reinforcing effects [of climate change] on crops."

The authors also looked at what this drop in food production may mean for world nutrition. Undernourishment, or the number of people not getting enough food, would increase by 49 percent by 2050 in the pessimistic ozone pollution scenario, and it would increase by 27 percent in the intermediate scenario.

The researchers point out that the effects of ozone pollution and climate change vary by region and the type of crop. For example, wheat does poorly when exposed to ozone, while corn is more sensitive to heat.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, an increase in CO₂ could mean some crops grow better, increasing yields. The study authors acknowledge this may offset effects of rising temperatures and pollution in some places.

However, the impact of climate change on agriculture also includes extreme weather events such as flooding, drought and exceptional temperatures, which may also damage crops. Weeds and pests may thrive in warmer temperatures, and ranges of certain pests and diseases could change, causing new challenges for farmers.

In a press release accompanying the new study, Heald said that the findings highlight the need for pollution reduction alongside climate action. “An air-quality cleanup would improve crop yields," she said. "Ozone is something that we understand the causes of, and the steps that need to be taken to improve air quality.”

Heald told HuffPost that the Clean Air Act has helped reduce surface ozone in the U.S. "Despite an increase in vehicle miles driven and energy consumption, surface ozone has declined by 25 percent on average across the U.S. from 1980 to 2012," she said. "However, the future of ozone air quality in the U.S. and around the world will depend on local emissions, the use of pollution control technology, regulations, and air quality policy."

Evan Lehman
E&E reporter

It turns out that cap and trade might not be so bad after all.

New research shows that reducing carbon emissions through regulations like the administration's recent rules on power plants cuts less carbon at a higher price than the embattled climate policy Congress failed to pass in 2010. Cap and trade, or an equivalent carbon tax, would be economically easier on families, fairer to lower-income people and more flexible for emitters, according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The study does not specifically examine U.S. EPA's newly proposed carbon rules, but it aims at the ballpark of all proposed rules. As such, it looks at regulatory options to cut carbon in the electricity sector, like a national renewable electricity standard and a clean energy standard, which permits nuclear power and natural gas. It also tested transportation regulations that already exist -- a fuel economy standard for new cars.

And it found that none of them works very well.

A renewable electricity standard and a transportation fuel economy standard would result in one-quarter of the emissions cuts attained by a cap-and-trade system. And all three would cost about the same, they said.

"Put differently, an equivalent level of emissions reduction could be achieved under a cap-and-trade system for less than 5% of the cost of either regulatory policy," said the researchers at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

If both regulatory plans were enacted -- one on electricity and the other on transportation -- their combined cost would be more expensive than a cap-and-trade system, the report says. But they would reduce just half the amount of emissions.

Take the transportation policy as an example. Increasing fuel efficiency only affects new cars, so carbon reductions can't be found in cheaper areas, like in agriculture or other industries, said Valerie Karplus, a research scientist with MIT and an author of the study.

"Any regulation that focuses on a subset of emissions reductions opportunities will therefore cost at least as much as an economy-wide cap-and-trade system, and often such targeted regulations actions can be much more costly," she said in an email.

Read more...

MIT researchers compare regulatory policies to a price on greenhouse gases and discover both the national and regional impacts.

By Jennifer Chu

For the past two summers, Australians have sweated through record heat waves, with thermometers climbing as high as 118 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the country. In January, officials were forced to halt tennis matches during the Australian Open due to extreme heat — a decision made following several days of sizzling temperatures.

Now MIT researchers have found that the intensity of summer temperatures in Australia and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere may be better predicted as early as the previous spring by an unlikely indicator: ozone.

From their study, published in the Journal of Climate, the scientists found that as the springtime ozone hole’s severity varies from year to year, the temperatures in Australia and southern regions of Africa and South America reveal correlations: Years with higher springtime ozone experience hotter summers, and vice versa.

The results suggest that ozone levels may help meteorologists predict the severity of summertime temperatures months in advance.

“No one has actually looked at the variation of ozone as a way to forecast or predict the climate or the next summer’s temperature,” says lead author Justin Bandoro, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “This could be especially important for farmers, and for areas like southeastern Australia, where most of that nation’s population resides.”

Bandoro’s MIT co-authors include Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science, and postdoc Aaron Donohoe, as well as David Thompson of Colorado State University and Benjamin Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

A spring forecast for summer temperatures

In 1987, countries around the world signed the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty that established a global phase-out of chemicals that cause ozone depletion. Because of the long lifetime of the chemicals, the ozone hole will continue to occur for many years, but it is expected to slowly begin to become less severe in the next several decades.

Bandoro and his colleagues analyzed annual ozone measurements, from 1979 through the most recent heat wave in 2013.

The team combined data from various sources, including a station in Antarctica that has measured total ozone levels in the same atmospheric column since the 1950s. The team performed a correlation analysis to identify links between ozone levels and variables such as temperature, precipitation, and wind patterns.

Although the ozone hole won’t close for many years, its intensity does vary somewhat from one year to another, and the depth of the hole affects an atmospheric phenomenon known as the Southern Annular Mode, which describes the wind patterns that circle Antarctica and influence the strength and position of fronts and storm systems in the Southern Hemisphere.

In years with high springtime ozone, the researchers found that winds shifted, bringing hotter summer temperatures to much of Australia and parts of southern Africa and South America. Lower ozone levels reversed this behavior, with winds leading to cooler summertime temperatures to these same regions.

Expect more extreme temperatures as ozone hole recovers

The link between springtime ozone and summertime temperatures is particularly strong for the present period, while ozone is still in a recovery phase. When the researchers examined this link from a period before the ozone hole had begun to form, they observed a much weaker correlation.

The implication, Bandoro says, is that as ozone levels likely rise in the coming decades, these parts of the Southern Hemisphere will probably experience systematically hotter summers.

“We can expect that these types of summers are going to be more frequent as the ozone hole recovers in coming decades,” Bandoro says. “When the ozone hole is deep, it essentially holds back climate change from showing its face, and Australia is just starting to feel this effect in the summertime in years with shallower ozone holes.”

David Karoly, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, says the MIT group has shown, for the first time, a strong relationship between the severity of summer temperatures in Australia and the strength of the ozone hole the previous spring. The results, he says, point to a long-term warming trend in the Southern Hemisphere.

“As the ozone hole recovers this century, the masking effects of ozone depletion causing reduced summer warming over the Southern Hemisphere will disappear,” says Karoly, who did not participate in the study. “Then there will be an acceleration of the summer warming trends over Australia and South Africa, as the ozone hole recovers and the masking influence disappears.”

by Peter Dizikes

Powerful, destructive tropical cyclones are now reaching their peak intensity farther from the equator and closer to the poles, according to a new study co-authored by an MIT scientist.

The results of the study, published today in the journal Nature, show that over the last 30 years, tropical cyclones — also known as hurricanes or typhoons — are moving poleward at a rate of about 33 miles per decade in the Northern Hemisphere and 38 miles per decade in the Southern Hemisphere.

“The absolute value of the latitudes at which these storms reach their maximum intensity seems to be increasing over time, in most places,” says Kerry Emanuel, an MIT professor and co-author of the new paper. “The trend is statistically significant at a pretty high level.”

And while the scientists who conducted the study are still investigating the atmospheric mechanisms behind this change, the trend seems consistent with a warming climate.

“It may mean the thermodynamically favorable conditions for these storms are migrating poleward,” adds Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at MIT.

The implications are serious, since the movement of peak intensity means regions further north and south of the equator, which have not previously had to face many landfalls by violent cyclones, may now have greater exposure to these extreme weather events. That, in turn, could lead to “potentially profound consequences to life and property,” the paper states. “Any related changes to positions where storms make landfall will have obvious effects on coastal residents and infrastructure.”

Moving with the trade winds?

The paper, “The Poleward Migration of the Location of Tropical Cyclone Maximum Intensity,” was co-written by James P. Kossin — who is the lead author — of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center; Gabriel A. Vecchi of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and Emanuel.

To conduct the study, the scientists used international data from 1982 to 2012, collected by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. They used the location of peak intensity of cyclones as a benchmark because it is a more consistent metric than statistics such as storm duration: The duration can be harder to estimate because of difficulties in establishing precisely when a storm should first be considered a tropical cyclone.

While there are regional differences in the poleward movement of cyclones, the fact that every ocean basin other than the northern Indian Ocean has experienced this change leads the researchers to suggest, in the paper, that this “migration away from the tropics is a global phenomenon.”

However, Emanuel notes, the global mechanisms underlying the trend are a matter for further research.

“We think, but have not yet been able to establish, that this is connected to independently observed poleward expansion of the Hadley circulation,” Emanuel says, referring to a large-scale pattern of global winds, which in recent years has also moved further poleward. The paper notes the potential impact of vertical wind shear, which inhibits cyclone formation; data suggests a decrease in wind shear in the tropics and an increase at higher latitudes.

Emanuel notes that researchers in the field are continuing to examine the links between storm migration and global warming. Over the past three decades, the incidence of cyclones in the tropics has actually diminished — because while tropical cyclones may become more intense in a warmer climate, it is actually more difficult to generate them.

Ocean temperatures between 82 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit seem to be “ideal for the genesis of tropical cyclones,” Emanuel says, “and as that belt migrates poleward, which surely it must as the whole ocean warms, the tropical cyclone genesis regions might just move with it. But we have more work to do to nail it down.”

Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, says the matter of cyclone migration is “a very interesting new angle on the larger issue of how climate change may be impacting tropical cyclone activity.”

Overall, Mann adds, “The findings seem quite plausible. We know that human-caused climate change is leading to a poleward shift in certain features of the atmospheric circulation. … It would be surprising if these shifts were not influencing tropical cyclones. This study shows that they are, by causing a poleward migration in the zones where atmospheric shear is either favorable or prohibitive to tropical cyclone formation.” In practical terms, he says, the result may have “considerable implications” for coastal cities in the long term.

David Chandler
MIT News Office

MIT has announced a major new campuswide initiative to promote transformative, cross-disciplinary research relating to the environment.

The initiative will be formally launched in the fall, and its founding director will be Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science. Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research and the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics, stewarded the establishment of the new initiative, and expressed gratitude to Solomon for having agreed to serve as its first leader.

“Professor Solomon is one of the finest climate scientists in the world,” Zuber says. “Her service in the coming year will be of immense value to MIT, and to the world.” A search will be mounted for a permanent director to run the initiative after its first year.

A major component of the initiative will be the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS), whose creation was announced this week; J-WAFS was established through a major gift from MIT alumnus Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel. Headed by John Lienhard, the Jameel Professor of Water and Food, the lab is intended to help humankind adapt to a rapidly rising population, a changing climate, and increasing urbanization and development. The lab will work toward environmentally benign, scalable solutions for water and food supply across a range of regional, social, and economic contexts. 

Regarding the environment initiative, Solomon says, “Our faculty, students, and staff have a deeply shared vision of being responsible stewards of the environment. This initiative will focus and amplify the aspirations of our community to understand, inform, and seek solutions to pressing problems of the natural world and built environment.”

This new initiative, she says, will promote research that engages wide participation by members of the MIT community to address the most significant interdisciplinary problems in our environment, spanning the physical and social sciences; engineering; and urban planning and policy.

“The goal of the initiative will be very specific: for faculty members to self-organize into teams of people who are interested in defining genuinely new research directions; to come up with ideas across schools; and to propose research that might not easily be funded by current federal agencies, which tend to be defined by disciplinary areas,” Solomon says. Such interdisciplinary research is recognized as a key way to bring about significant advances in technology and understanding.

Like the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), the new program is also expected to produce detailed, comprehensive studies in particular areas of concern — in this case, large-scale environmental issues. “Such studies by MIT would be welcomed on Capitol Hill,” Solomon says.“One of the most important challenges of our time is the question of how to build a sustainable human society,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif wrote in an email to the MIT community this morning. “The intense interest in this subject from our students and faculty reflects a shared sense of urgency and obligation. With Professor Solomon’s leadership, the environment initiative will help focus MIT’s distinctive strengths on advancing science, engineering, management, design and policy solutions to help drive the kind of progress required in time to make a difference.”

The initiative, which does not yet have a formal name, will start with funding for five years of operation, partly provided by MIT; after that it is expected to be self-sustaining, Solomon says. It will tie together research undertaken by many departments and centers at MIT, including, in addition to J-WAFS, the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; the Department of Urban Studies and Planning; the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; the Center for Global Change Science; and the Earth System Initiative, among others. Some themes of the new initiative will link closely with ongoing efforts in MITEI, particularly on climate change and water.

The search for the director was announced in February by Provost Martin Schmidt. The search committee, chaired by Professor Markus Buehler, included Professors Rob van der Hilst, Eran Ben-Joseph, JoAnne Yates, and Melissa Nobles. Professors Robert Armstrong and Vladimir Bulović also served on the committee; they were asked to help think through coordination with existing MIT initiatives. The committee worked with students to get their input.

The initiative will put out a call for initial interdisciplinary proposals this fall, Zuber says, adding: “We want new ideas. MIT can bring its special talents to bear to address global concerns, in the process drawing in people from across the campus.”

Additionally, a group consisting of Solomon, Zuber, Schmidt, and Armstrong (who serves as director of MITEI) will lead a series of conversations around campus on how MIT should engage to address the issue of climate change. This activity will include a series of lectures by prominent speakers representing a diverse set of perspectives.

The initiative will place a high priority on engaging the many students whose interests center on the environment and sustainability issues, Solomon says.

“There are a lot of opportunities for synergies,” she continues. “The initiative will take advantage of the traditionally open atmosphere at MIT, which fosters interactions among people working in very different fields of study. That spirit of collaboration, and the possibilities it unleashes, are very powerful.”

Global warming is rapidly turning America the beautiful into America the stormy, sneezy and dangerous, according to a new federal scientific report. And those shining seas? Rising and costly, the report says.

Climate change's assorted harms "are expected to become increasingly disruptive across the nation throughout this century and beyond," the National Climate Assessment concluded Tuesday. The report emphasizes how warming and its all-too-wild weather are changing daily lives, even using the phrase "climate disruption" as another way of saying global warming.

Still, it's not too late to prevent the worst of climate change, says the 840-page report, which the White House is highlighting as it tries to jump-start often stalled efforts to curb heat-trapping gases.

However, if the nation and the world don't change the way they use energy, "we're still on the pathway to more damage and danger of the type that are described in great detail in the rest of this report," said study co-author Henry Jacoby, co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jacoby, other scientists and White House officials said this is the most detailed and U.S.-focused scientific report on global warming.

Read the full story here

Joint Program codirector emeritus Henry Jacoby appeared on CBC's The Lang & O'Leary Exchange to discuss the findings of the Third National Climate Assessment. Jacoby is a lead author of the report's chapter on mitigation. Watch the interview below. 

Last week, a divided court of appeals upheld what may well be the most important environmental rule in the nation's history: the Environmental Protection Agency's mercury standards. The regulation is expected to prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 asthma attacks a year.

Critics of the mercury rule have focused on its expense. The EPA estimates it will cost $9.6 billion a year, with most of the burden falling on electric utilities. Indeed, the issue of cost is what split the court.

The Clean Air Act allows the EPA to regulate electric utilities under its hazardous air pollutants program only if it finds that such regulation "is appropriate and necessary." Focusing solely on mercury's effect on public health, the EPA made that finding.

That troubled Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh. In his dissenting opinion, he asked, quite reasonably, how the EPA could possibly conclude that regulation is "appropriate" without considering costs. He argued that it's "just common sense and sound government practice" to take account of costs as well as benefits.

But the court's majority had an answer. It noted the EPA had considered costs — not in its initial decision on whether to regulate mercury emissions but in its second and crucial decision about how stringent the regulation should be. The court's majority also emphasized the benefits of the rule, which have been estimated to be worth from $37 billion to $90 billion, outweighing the costs by a factor of between 3 to 1 and 9 to 1.

For the future, the mercury controversy offers two lessons. The first is that no approach to environmental protection can afford to be indifferent to costs. In situations where Congress allows the EPA to take account of costs, the agency should do so, at least in considering the appropriate level of stringency.

The second lesson is more subtle. Calculations of the costs and benefits of a regulation should use the best available science. In the case of mercury, for example, the substance itself is a neurotoxicant, potentially affecting memory, language, attention and cognition. But it is not easy to quantify mercury's adverse effects, and the EPA did not try.

The massive benefits identified by the EPA are expected to come not from mercury reductions but from "co-benefits" — that is, from reductions in other air pollutants that will result from efforts to reduce mercury emissions.

The vast majority of the quantified benefits of the mercury rule are a product of incidental reductions in emissions of just one other pollutant: particulate matter. That's not all that surprising, given that reductions in particulate matter, which can cause serious health problems, accounted for about one-third to one-half of the total monetized benefits of all significant federal regulations from 2003 through 2012.

In coming years, the benefits of further reductions in particulate matter will be among the most contested issues in environmental regulation. No one doubts that particulate matter is harmful to human health, but we need answers to important questions about which particles are the most dangerous and how much damage they cause at low concentrations.

Increasingly, that will involve relying on so-called natural experiments to learn about the effects of pollution on health. Such experiments ask what happens to health when some practice or event (a regulatory action, for example) causes a significant, and sometimes abrupt, change in pollution for one group of people but leaves pollution unchanged for another, similar group of people.

One such study examined the health of two similar populations in China. One consisted of people who lived north of the Huai River, who received free, government-provided coal to heat their homes. The other was made up of people who lived south of the river and did not get free coal. Those heating their homes with the free coal were found to have life expectancies 5.5 years shorter than those who did not, due to the coal-generated particulate matter they inhaled.

A greater reliance on natural experiments would be an important improvement in regulatory policy. Currently, we rely on observational studies that, while informative, don't necessarily tell us what we need to know to determine a regulation's benefits. These studies compare health in places with high and low levels of pollution. But if, say, Los Angeles has higher levels of asthma than, say, Boise, Idaho, differences in the populations — such as people's socioeconomic status or health habits — rather than differences in air pollution may be responsible. Researchers try to control for those differences with rigorous statistical methods, but it is not always easy to do so.

The court's decision to uphold the EPA's mercury rule means that the American people will be able to enjoy significant health benefits. As we celebrate that decision, we should ensure that the best science is brought to bear on decisions that affect present and future occupants of the planet.

Francesca Dominici is a professor in the department of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. Michael Greenstone is a professor of environmental economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cass R. Sunstein is a professor at Harvard Law School; he worked on the mercury rule while serving in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2012.