Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate

Overview

The Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate master from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) includes two Education Programs:

• Atmospheric Science
• Climate Science

The Atmospheric Science Program emphasizes an integrated approach involving theory, modeling, experiments, and data analysis. Study areas include atmospheric dynamics, synoptic meteorology, atmospheric convection, dynamics of the middle atmosphere, tropical meteorology, atmospheric chemistry, and atmospheric radiation. Because of its cross-disciplinary nature, the program often includes study in mathematics and/or chemistry. Recent areas of research have included the ozone hole, the dynamics of hurricanes, adaptive sampling, and air-sea interaction.

The Climate Science Program capitalizes on the overlapping nature of the atmospheric, oceanic, and geological sciences as they relate to climate and climate change. Students have access to unique expertise in all aspects of climate including paleoclimatology and the geological record, all of atmospheric and oceanic physics and chemistry, fluid dynamical modeling of the climate system, hydrology, and geophysics. Ongoing research activities include the study of high latitude North Atlantic deep-sea cores as records of the climate of the past 200,000 years; coupled models of air-sea interaction developed in MIT’s Climate Modeling Initiative; studies of possible mechanisms of the Permo-Triassic Mass extinction; Atlantic Climate Variability; and global biogeochemical cycles.