Featured series 
Tag: Climate
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Science & Tech
Ending ‘dead zones’
Harvard scientists are teaming up with sustainability officers and landscaping experts to test a new fertilizer that won’t wash into water supplies.
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Science & Tech
Want to avoid climate-related disasters? Try moving
For decades, the response to flooding and hurricanes was a vow to rebuild. A.R. Siders believes the time has come to consider managed retreat, or the practice of moving communities away from disaster-prone areas to safer lands.
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Science & Tech
The impact of ocean acidification
In a first-of-its-kind study, findings suggest that continued ocean warming and acidification could impact everything from how fish move to how they eat.
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Arts & Culture
Design course opens students’ eyes to ‘plant blindness’
A course at the Graduate School of Design takes students from the classroom into Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum, where plants come to life for these landscape architects.
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Science & Tech
A growing role as a living lab
Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum is a critical destination for researchers such as Andrew Groover, who finds every species he needs within its 281 acres.
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Science & Tech
Curbing carbon on campus
Harvard University achieves ambitious climate goal set in 2008.
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Science & Tech
The complex relationship between heat and ozone
If emission rates continue unchecked, regions of the United States could experience between three and nine additional days of unhealthy ozone levels each year by 2050, according to a new study from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
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Science & Tech
Climate test for forests
New research on northeastern forests is examining how the earlier arrival of warm weather might clash with genetic programming tuned to lengthening days and the duration and depth of winter cold.
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Science & Tech
More eyes on climate change
Season Spotter is a citizen-science project that aims to recruit Internet users to assist researchers analyzing images of natural scenes.
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Health
Case of the rotting mummies
Chilean preservationists have turned to a Harvard scientist with a record of solving mysteries around threatened cultural artifacts.
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Science & Tech
A trap for greenhouse gas
A team of researchers has developed a novel class of materials that enable a safer, cheaper, and more energy-efficient process for removing greenhouse gas from power-plant emissions.
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Science & Tech
Boston’s leaky pipes add to greenhouse-gas buildup
A Harvard-led study reveals that an aging natural-gas distribution system short-changes Boston-area customers and contributes to greenhouse-gas buildup. Depending on the season, natural gas leaking from the local distribution system accounts for 60 percent to 100 percent of the region’s emissions of methane.
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Campus & Community
Fund to tackle climate change
In an effort to catalyze research into sustainable energy sources, Harvard President Drew Faust has challenged University friends and alumni to raise a $20 million Climate Change Solutions Fund and seed new approaches to confronting the threat of climate change.
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Science & Tech
Battery offers renewable energy breakthrough
A team of Harvard scientists and engineers has demonstrated a new type of battery that could fundamentally transform the way electricity is stored on the grid, making power from renewable energy sources such as wind and sun far more economical and reliable.
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Science & Tech
U.S. methane emissions exceed government estimates
Emissions of methane from fossil fuel extraction and refining activities in the United States are nearly five times higher than previous estimates, according to researchers at Harvard University and seven other institutions.
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Science & Tech
Weather warning
A report co-authored by Professor Michael McElroy and D. James Baker, a former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, connects global climate change, extreme weather, and national security.
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Science & Tech
Cautious geohacking
By tailoring geoengineering efforts by region and by need, a new model promises to maximize the effectiveness of solar radiation management while mitigating its potential side effects and risks.
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Science & Tech
Concerns about climate change, health
A team of researchers led by James G. Anderson, the Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, warns that a newly discovered connection between climate change and depletion of the ozone layer over the U.S. could allow more damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation to reach the Earth’s surface, leading to increased incidence of skin cancer.
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Science & Tech
Carbon counter
Atmospheric scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Nanjing University have produced the first “bottom-up” estimates of China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, for 2005 to 2009, and the first statistically rigorous estimates of the uncertainties surrounding China’s CO2 emissions.
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Science & Tech
‘Warming hole’ delayed climate change
Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a “warming hole” over the eastern United States — that is, a cold patch where the effects of global warming were temporarily obscured.
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Science & Tech
Ambitious undertaking
U.S. Undersecretary of Energy Kristina Johnson said the United States plans to have 80 percent of its energy come from alternative and unconventional fossil fuels by 2050. She spoke as part of the “Future of Energy” discussion series sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
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Nation & World
Prepping for Copenhagen
Harvard Kennedy School professor Robert Stavins will work behind the scenes at the 2009 U.N. summit on climate change with his Harvard-led initiative on global warming.
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Campus & Community
Around the Schools: Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Green ’13 is a new initiative from the class of 2013 that aims to change the culture of personal behavior, starting with being more sustainable.
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Campus & Community
HKS presents Roy Family Environmental Award
Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS) will present the 2009 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership to the Mexico City Metrobus, a bus rapid transit system that reduces air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions while improving the quality of life and transportation options in one of the largest cities in the world.
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Nation & World
Designs for enduring structures
As the hurricane bears down on the village, the people do what many all over the world do: head to the local school for shelter. A place of learning in normal times becomes a place of refuge during disasters.
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Science & Tech
Green reunions: Groundwork set
As of June 4, Harvard has celebrated 358 commencements. Add to that the simultaneous celebration of untold thousands of reunions.
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Nation & World
Energy
ENERGY: Daniel P. Schrag, Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology and Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
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Science & Tech
Mining exec: Coal vital to energy mix
The leader of one of the nation’s largest coal mining companies said Tuesday (Feb. 3) that coal is a vital part of the nation’s energy mix and that clean coal technology must be developed if the atmosphere is to stop warming.
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Science & Tech
Global temp analysis clarifies warming details
An analysis of global temperatures between 1850 and 2007 has illuminated some climate change details, showing that winter temperatures have risen more rapidly than summer temperatures and that the seasons are coming nearly two days earlier than they were 50 years ago.
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Science & Tech
Idle computing power may ID candidate molecules for efficient solar panels
The world today uses enough power to illuminate 150 billion light bulbs for a year. According to some estimates, by 2050, demand will double, creating irreversible climate change without reductions in humanity’s carbon output.