Air pollution and hurricanes: A connection?
- Time:
- Monday, October 12th, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm
- Location:
- La Sala de Puerto Rico, MIT Student Center
- Speaker(s):
- Kerry EmanuelCecil and Ida Green professor of atmospheric science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Armed with supercomputers and vast and varied troves of data, meteorologists and climate scientists can now continually ask new questions about how human activity affects earth systems. Kerry Emanuel has been studying the forces behind cyclonic storms on Earth and other planets for decades. While many scientists focus on the radiative forcing that results from increasing carbon dioxide in the Earth atmosphere, Emanuel has recently looked more closely at aerosols in industrial emissions, such as sulfates, which are short-lived in the atmosphere but may have powerful effects on storm formation. He will report on current work to tease out the natural and anthropogenic factors that may be driving the frequency, intensity and other characteristics of North Atlantic hurricanes. Social media hashtag: #WhyHurricanes.