Show Notes
If you live in the U.S. Mountain West, the Pacific Coast of the Americas, or large parts of Australia or southern Europe, there’s a good chance a major wildfire has passed near you in the last five or six years—maybe one more intense than anything you’ve ever heard of in your area. But why exactly are wildfires getting worse? Is climate change entirely to blame? And what should we be preparing for next?
More from Ask MIT Climate
In this second installment, Prof. Costa Samaras of Carnegie Mellon University and Dr. Vijay Gadepally of MIT return to talk through some of the options on the table for responding to these challenges. And we explore how our choices fit into the bigger picture of tackling climate change, as data centers’ growing electricity needs meet those of electric vehicles, heat pumps and clean manufacturing.
At the heart of the explosion in artificial intelligence, there are data centers. Companies are pouring money into these facilities to train and run AI models—and with this massive buildout comes a remarkable appetite for electricity. In the first installment of our two-parter on data centers and the U.S. energy system, Prof. Costa Samaras of Carnegie Mellon University and Dr. Vijay Gadepally of MIT walk us through some of the challenges posed by this surging electricity demand.
How can climate change cause both more intense droughts and more severe floods? With help from Prof. Mathew Barlow, we dive into the water cycle on a warming planet, and learn how the basic physics of water moving through the atmosphere can explain a lot of the strange weather we need to prepare for as the world heats up.
Dr. Sarah Das, a Scientist Emeritus at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, takes us behind the scenes: into the world of glacier science, “boomerang flights,” and ice as far as the eye can see.
The frozen parts of our planet—from sprawling polar ice sheets and floating sea ice to mountain glaciers and frigid soils—face profound risks from climate change. Already, a warmer world has transformed these landscapes, with consequences that span the globe.