MIT Climate Grand Challenge is an initiative to deliver high-impact climate solutions. In the first round, 27 teams as finalists from a field of nearly 100 initial proposals. “Preparing for a New World of Weather and Climate Extremes,” a project led by Professor Paul O’Gorman, Associate Professor Miho Mazereeuw, and Professor Kerry Emanuel, was among the five of the most promising proposals that are selected as multi-year flagship projects.

Climate change is intensifying extreme weather and climate events, such as the unprecedented heatwave in western North America in 2021 and rainfall from Hurricane Harvey in 2017. These devastating events are becoming more intense globally, but we do not adequately know the changing risks for specific regions and communities, or how changing extremes will affect the wider use of wind, solar, and hydroelectric energy that is needed to limit future greenhouse gas emissions. This research will address these key gaps in knowledge by making improvements in the science and prediction of extremes and their effects on our energy systems. Based on the improved predictions of extremes and Insights from community partners, we aim to build a scalable toolkit, initially focused on cities in the United States and Africa, for communities and stakeholders to prepare and adapt. The team includes 17professors and research scientists at MIT with broad expertise covering: modeling and science of weather extremes, downscaling approaches and machine learning, climate tipping points and paleoclimate, flood modeling, climate adaptation and preparedness for cities, the real estate market, urban policy and equity, renewable energy systems, and energy grid resilience. This project seeks to bridge the gap between scientific breakthroughs and community action by bringing together experts in climate science, engineering, design, and machine learning at MIT with external partners to provide the greatest benefit to communities, municipalities, and industry. The research will focus on three key areas of climate action.

Reduce key scientific uncertainties in how weather and climate extremes respond to warming: The team will build a physical understanding of weather and climate extremes which is necessary to interpret future climate projections and to ensure their credibility. We will focus on temperature extremes and their persistence, convective precipitation extremes and snowfall extremes, and extremes with long return periods (100 years or more). We will address the risk of climate tipping points using rescaling of past extreme climate events. We will also use emergent constraints and physical storylines to address uncertainty in the large-scale circulation response, which has large effects on the local response of extremes.

Assess the risk of current and changing extremes in specific locations: Risk assessment of weather extremes in a changing climate requires downscaling of global climate simulations and local flood modeling. We will develop new downscaling approaches that combine physics with statistical methods (e.g., to downscale cyclones) and through machine learning. The research team will also use dynamical downscaling with regional convective-permitting simulations that have good representations of extreme precipitation.

Develop and apply a Climate Adaptation and Preparedness Toolkit for cities: Led by the Urban Risk Lab the team will develop a Climate Adaptation and Preparedness Toolkit that will enable climate scientists and local stakeholders to work together to develop a new understanding of changing weather and climate extremes considering local needs. This work will help integrate robust, location-based urban flooding models with a series of risk communication, planning, development, and design modules. The toolkit modules will include online platforms and will guide semi-structured interviews, participatory mapping, and workshops. The toolkit will be developed in partnership with stakeholders in a broad range of locations in the U.S. and Southern Africa.4. Quantify and prepare for the risk to renewable energy and grid resilience from changing weather and climate extremes

Link to Project Fact Sheet (MIT Climate Grand Challange Site)

Contributors

MIT Urban Risk Lab: Miho Mazereeuw, David Moses, Aditya Barve, Mayank Ojha, Larisa Ovalles

MIT Earth and Planetary Sciences: Paul O’Gorman, Kerry Emanuel, Tim Cronin, Dan Rothman, David McGee, Kristin Bergman, Sai Ravela, Talia Tamarin-Brodsky, Raffaele Ferrari.

MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering: Saurabh Amin, Michael Howland.

MIT Center for Global Change Science: Xiang Gao, Ken Strzepek, Adam Schlosse.

MIT IDSS: Jessica Trancik.

MIT School of Planning + Architecture: Justin Steil, Jessica Trancik, Kairos Shen

MIT Office of Sustainability: Brian Goldberg.

National Center for Atmospheric Research: Andreas Prein.